Sustainable Product Design Education: Current Practice

Abstract

Current production and consumption patterns are unsustainable, causing irreversible damage to the environment and human health and well-being. Designers play a vital role in resolving this problem—their decisions affect product manufacturing, distribution, use, and disposal—and hence they must be aware of the positive and negative impacts of their design decisions. Sustainable product design education is key to developing the knowledge, skills, and responsibility required for future generations of product designers and their educators to make informed and responsible decisions within their practice, and also enhance the social and environmental performance of their creations and effectively communicate the value of such decisions within a commercial context. In this article, we present insights and challenges in contemporary sustainable product design education in higher education. We document the experiences of six academics involved in teaching and researching sustainable product design in the United Kingdom, Australia, Denmark, the Netherlands, and the United States. We hope to provide a useful reference for academics seeking to adopt sustainable product design practices in their existing programs, develop new sustainable product design education programs, or reflect on their own existing product design practice.