Introduction Environmental issues are not new to the design professions. William Morris was among the first to consider the environmental as well as the social implications of his work. Buckminster Fuller in the 1930s and Victor Papanek until recently, have carried the environmental baton and explored the numerous ecodesign concepts found today. Although not designers, Fritz Schumacher in his seminal work Small Is Beautiful' and Ivan Illitch in Tools for Conviviality,2 have helped shape many of the social, structural, and economic arguments that can facilitate design for healthy, equitable, and autonomous living. Yet, while designers have long drawn inspiration from critiques on the industrial economy; environmental policy making; alternative technology movements; systems thinking and city planning, among other subjects; it is only recently that there has been evidence of a reciprocal action: a growing interest in these quarters in design. For example, explicit reference now can be found to the significance of design in achieving environmental, economic, and social policy goals at national, regional, and international levels.3 In many ways, this acknowledgment of the role of design in creating more sustainable forms of living and working is a reflection of the broadening concerns and issues that are increasingly accepted as influencing the work of designers. Such extension of the design space is evidenced through the shift from design for environment contained within the factory gates, to issues such as energy efficiency and recycling, to design for the whole product lifecycle and, more recently, to functional innovation and the integration of new design concepts within systems of service delivery. It is within the above context, of an expanding and increasingly complex role for the design professions, that this paper is written. While it already is recognized that the scale of environmental impact depends on population size, what this population does, and the technology it uses,4 the consideration in ecodesign of consumption, human choices, and actions has been overshadowed by an emphasis on pollution and resource use during production as the main object of environmental concern. Greater consideration in the ecodesign of anthropogenics and the social, cultural, and economic processes that shape environmental change seems overdue. This paper, therefore, examines dominant design approaches to environ1 E. F. Schumacher, Small Is Beautiful (London: Abacus Books, 1973). 2 Ivan Illich, Tools for Conviviality(London: Calder and Boyars, 1973). 3 See, for example: UK Foresight Programme in Sustainable Technologies fora Cleaner World(London: Office of Science and Technology, 1998), which sets out some key areas to integrate design thinking, sustainable development, and government action. 4 This is commonly referred to as the IPAT identity, (I=PxAxT where I is impact, P population, A equates to a measure of affluence, and T a characteristic of technology) and is discussed in Paul Ehrlich and Ann Ehrlich, The Population Explosion (London: Hutchinson, 1990), 58.