Sustainable Design as a Balancing Act

摘要

The sleek mobile tablet at your fingertips, the stylish sunglasses in your pocket, and the point-and-shoot camera you use to capture your Kodak moments—they all have an ecological lifespan that's much longer than you think. The time the product remains in your possession—its duration of operation and service—may be just a few months (a pair of sunglasses) to a couple of years (a tablet or a digital camera), but its ecological footprint has been established long before you pick it up from your local mall. It will continue to grow long after its disposal. A series of decisions made in the manufacturing process—using polycarbonate instead of scratch-resistant borosili-cate materials for a lens, or using injection molding instead of machining for a latch—affects a product's environmental impact.