Green Product Design Network

Students, faculty, staff, and business leaders are invited to join the Green Product Design Collaboration Network to invent sustainable products. Their intent is to develop "a different approach to product design."

The Green Product Design Network (GPDN) began with a group of leaders from the University of Oregon with expertise in green chemistry, product design, business and journalism and communication with an interest in inventing sustainable products that can be readily adopted and marketed to our larger society.

The goal is to take ideas from invention to the marketplace in a way that has a more expedient and lasting impact on society.The Green Product Design Network–in accordance with the University of Oregon’s emerging academic plan, and “Big Ideas”–has been selected as one of five key projects that the University of Oregon (UO) is supporting and highlighting as a major strategic initiative for the UO.

On Wednesday, March 30, 2011 The Green Product Design Network held an event titled, Perceptions of Green Product Design and Green Marketing, at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art on the University of Oregon campus in Eugene, Oregon. The business of green product design was explored through two presentations by Kiersten Muenchinger (UO Product Design) and Kim Sheehan (UO Journalism and Communications) exploring materials, marketing, waste and misconceptions about environmentally-friendly product design.

The Green Product Design Network is confronting challenges related to our dwindling resource base, climate change, chemical contaminants, the viability and success of our financial markets, and the emergence of new technologies. The best solutions to these problems will come from research cutting across many disciplines and from the creation of tailored, multidisciplinary education programs for our students. This is the aim of the GPDN.

Their strategy is to develop a network that is inclusive and taps the potential of the wide range of scholars needed to tackle these large challenges and allows for broader participation than typical Center and Institute structures. In addition, a network structure facilitates open participation from external strategic partners including those from industry, government, and NGOs. Networks are flexible and nimble, even at large scale – there is minimal fixed infrastructure and participation can define membership while project leadership can easily change as focus shifts.

Their Vision involves enhancing synergies to Impact the “Triple Bottom Line:” People, Planet, and Profit. Inventing and marketing profitable products that truly are green. This requires a broad interdisciplinary approach—and the UO is uniquely equipped to provide it. The GPDN provides a unifying theme to leverage strengths in the arts and sciences, architecture and allied arts, business, journalism, and law to provide a systems approach to:

• Improve understanding about how new products affect the environment, our economic structures, and society.
• Invent greener products, materials, and chemicals.
• Discover the best business models and practices to deliver these innovations to society.
• Create meaningful educational programs for current and future generations.The strength of this strategy is that it will enhance synergies between the three pillars of the "triple bottom line:" people, planet, and profit.

Contact Julie A. Haack for more information, go to the Green Product Design Network Website and see their Facebook page.

© 2011, Richard Matthews. All rights reserved.

The Best Eco-Inventions of 2009: Energy Efficiency

The Smart Thermostat: The EnergyHub Dashboard communicates wirelessly with your furnace and your appliances and monitors energy consumption and costs. It can also turn appliances on and off and raise or lower the temperature in your house. The EnergyHub device provides detailed spreadsheets for programming energy usage, and offers features such as comparing your home’s energy usage to that of other EnergyHub users and weekly energy consumption. EnergyHub is currently partnering with utilities for trials and will be available direct to consumers in early 2010.

A More Energy Efficient Light Bulb: Philips Electronics has developed a light-emitting diode (LED) bulb said to produce as much light as a 60W incandescent bulb using less than 10W, and lasting 25 times as long. Sixty-watt lights account for 50% of the domestic incandescent market; replacing conventional light bulbs with LED. could save electricity equivalent to the energy required to power 17.4 million households.

Electron Stimulated Luminescence (ESL) Lighting Technology: This technology from Vu1 uses accelerated electrons to stimulate phosphor which creates light by making the surface of the bulb glow. ESL Technology says that this bulb creates the same light quality as an incandescent but is more energy conserving. These bulbs are mercury free.

Electricity Management with Mobile Technology: Z-Wave enabled home automation systems enables users to control thermostat, lighting etc from a mobile phone.

Blink Photocell Controlled Outlet has an adjustable eyelid that can be fine tuned to activate or deactivate the light sensing function. This gives it the energy saving advantage of automatically disabling and enabling outlets with the rising or setting of the sun. These little sensors can replace the need for bulky, complicated timers.
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Next: The Best Eco-Inventions of 2009: Transportation / The Best Eco-Inventions of 2009: Consumer Goods / The Best Eco-Inventions of 2009: Education / The Best Eco-Inventions of 2009: Food and Water

Best Eco-Inventions 2009

There were a host of greener inventions in 2009 and they include everything from tooth brushes to a planetary nervous system.

The term "eco-inventions" is composed of "eco" the short form of ecology, defined as the branch of biology concerned with the relations of organisms to one another and to their physical surroundings. The word "invention" is defined as the creation of a new device or process, resulting from study and experimentation.

In the simplist terms, eco-inventions can claim one or more of the following: They save materials, they reduce energy, they increase efficiency, and they promote recycling or repurposing.

Some of the best inventions of 2009 involve monitoring technology. NASA and Cisco have teamed up to develop the "Planetary Skin," it will integrate land, sea, air and space-based sensors, helping the public and private sectors make decisions to prevent and adapt to climate change. The pilot project will track geographically specific carbon levels held by rain forests. A prototype will be released in 2010.

Researchers from Princeton University have developed a method of measuring the Personal Carbon Footprint. Their efforts stress individual carbon emissions rather than national levels.

Some of the more widely available green inventions include portable solar or wind powered rechargers for personal electronics like mobile phones and mp3 players. Although not a new technology, support.com's free “Green Computer” service helps people save energy and money. This service makes your computer more energy efficient and can save up to $75 dollars per year, equivalent to 400 to 1200 pounds of CO2 emissions. Seemingly small efforts add up, if one hundred thousand people used support.com's Green Computer service the carbon savings would be equivalent to planting 1000 acres of trees.

Recently Time magazine published its list of the 50 Best Inventions of 2009 and green innovations figured prominently in their list. As the year draws to a close, The Green Market will post a summary of 25 of the best eco-inventions of 2009. These inventions will be presented under the following 6 headings:

1. Energy Production
2. Energy Efficiency
3. Transportation
4. Consumer Goods
5. Education
6. Food/Water

From large scale projects to small scale creations, green inventions and energy innovation are the way of the future.
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Next: The Best Eco-Inventions of 2009: Energy Production / The Best Eco-Inventions of 2009: Energy Efficiency / The Best Eco-Inventions of 2009: Transportation / The Best Eco-Inventions of 2009: Consumer Goods / The Best Eco-Inventions of 2009: Education / The Best Eco-Inventions of 2009: Food and Water

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