I want to reduce my customers' material consumption

Many industrial processes result in enormous waste of valuable materials.

If you can develop products or services which can reduce this consumption, you will have a very strong selling point when negotiating with your customers – and you will also be helping to reduce the burden on the planet's resources.

This is what Icelandic company Marorka realised. It has developed a mathematical model which can ensure that large ocean-going cargo ships use their costly – and polluting – fuel as efficiently as possible benefitting both the environment and the ship's owner.

Other ways of making savings
Instead of saving on materials, you could look for new solutions using recyclable materials or materials that can be returned to nature without polluting.

You could also help develop materials that are designed to limit the loss of energy – there is currently a lot of work going on in this area in the construction industry.

How builders are saving energy (Danish)

Take a good look at yourself
Of course you could also take a good look at your own company. Sjørring Maskinfabrik, which produces metal parts, underwent ISO 14001 environmental certification to meet the needs of demanding customers.

One surprise result of the process was that the company improved its waste management to such an extent that the process ended up paying for itself – not to mention keeping its customers happy.

One inspiring approach is to view one company's waste as another's raw materials, which is exactly how things work in nature. Multinational food group Unilever certainly did when it started producing ice-cream wrappers in the Netherlands that contained seeds from rare and endangered flower species. Once discarded into nature, the wrapper breaks down organically as soon as the temperature rises above 6°C. The tiny seeds are then released and nourished by the wrapper and the sun, and unwanted rubbish is transformed into beautiful flowers.
In this way the company complies with the ideas of sustainable design (Danish link). In brief, sus-tainable design is about organising our lives and designing modern consumer goods so that our waste becomes nutrients for future generations of products, raw materials and healthy living organ-isms.
Are you able to design products which can create new value?