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Designing and Producing
Quick questions on Sustainability and environmental considerations: HSC Design and Technology Designing and Producing
5short Q&A pairs drawn directly from our worked dot-point answer. For full context and worked exam questions, read the parent dot-point page.
What is life cycle thinking?Show answer
The foundation of sustainable design is the life cycle: the full journey of a product from raw material extraction, through manufacture, distribution, use and finally disposal. Each stage consumes resources and energy and produces waste and emissions. Life cycle analysis assesses impact across all stages, which prevents the mistake of improving one stage while worsening another. A material that is recyclable but takes enormous energy to produce may be worse overall than a simpler alternative.
What is choosing materials sustainably?Show answer
Material choice is one of the most powerful sustainability levers. Designers consider:
What is the waste hierarchy?Show answer
The reduce, reuse, recycle hierarchy ranks waste strategies from best to worst. Reducing the amount of material and energy used in the first place is most effective. Designing a product to be reused or refilled comes next. Recycling, recovering material at end of life, is valuable but uses energy and is less preferable than reducing or reusing.
What is design for the environment?Show answer
Several design strategies build sustainability into the product itself:
What are token green claims?Show answer
Justify material, energy and waste decisions; do not just call a product eco friendly.
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