Design

Visual abstract for the design chapter.

Designers have been battling complexity since the beginning of design. Industrial designer Dieter Rams famously said in the 1970s “Good design makes a product understandable” as one of the ten key tenets to strive for in good products (DW Euromaxx, 2018; Fabrique & Q42, n.d.). Don Norman, the grandfather of interaction design, is quoted as saying:

“Modern technology can be complex, but complexity by itself is neither good nor bad: it is confusion that is bad.” - (Norman, 2016)

I would simply say: Design makes complexity comprehensible.

Sustainability is one of the most complex goals that humanity has set for itself. The following looks at some of the ways design might make it.. achievable.. and comprehensible.

Eco-Design: Design as Political Action at Scale

Politics matters in sustainability. In Brazil, deforestation fell 60% in 1 year, based on remote satellite reconnaissance, after the election of a more pro-environment leadership (Watts, 2023). Globally, the monumental task of removing several gigatons of CO_2e from the atmosphere requires massive policy shifts and collaboration across countries and industries (Mackler et al., 2021).

In Europe, the EU “Green Deal” legislative strategy is comprehensive and backed by science, with the EU Commission having released strategic foresight reports since 2020, and becoming a driving force of transformative climate legislation in Europe (European Commission, 2023). The timeline of the policy context in Europe is as follows: in 2019, the von der Leyen commission adopted the European Union (EU) Green Deal strategy. In 2021 the Commision proposed a goal of reducing CO2e emissions by 55% by 2030 under the Fit for 55 policy package consisting of a wide range of economic measures. In November 2022, the proposal was adopted by the EU Council and EU Parliament with an updated goal of 57% of CO2e reductions compared to 1990, set to become a binding law for all EU member countries (EU Reaches Agreement on National Emission Reductions, 2022; European Commission, 2019b, 2019a; European Council, 2022). In March 2022, the EU Circular Economy Action Plan was adopted, looking to make sustainable products the norm in EU and empowering consumers as described in (European Commission, 2022a).

Designing the right legislative measures can be hugely impactful.

Consumer products’ overall life-cycle environmental impact is defined in the design process by the materials and energy resources needed and the post-consumer potential for reuse or recycling. In the context of the European Union, eco-design has gained political support from European Commission as part of the EU’s “Green Deal” legislative strategy, aiming to transform European economies into sustainability leaders (Commission et al., 2014). The Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR) entered into force in July 2024 (European Commission, 2024) following the (European Parliament, 2022) proposal whereby the European Commission established a general framework for eco-design: “requirements for sustainable products, repealing rules [referring to the previous Eco-Design Directive (2009/125/EC)] currently in force which concentrate on energy-related products only,” setting up a level playing-field for the organizations operating on the EU single market. Virginijus Sinkevičius, the EU Commissioner for the Environment, Oceans and Fisheries, is quoted as describing eco-design as design that “respects the boundaries of our planet” (European Commission, 2022c).

The 9 qualities of eco-designed products based on the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR) enacted as law in the EU as of July 2024 [@luttinFullOverviewEU2025; @europeanparliamentEcodesignSustainableProducts2022].

Feature	Benefit
Durable	Reduces the need to frequently replace the product
Reusable	Extends the product’s life-cycle; sell or share to the next user
Reparable	Extends the product’s life-cycle; fix instead of discarding
Upgradable	Extends the product’s life-cycle; improve performance without complete replacement.
Easy to Maintain	Reduce resources needed to keep the product functional
Easy to Refurbish	Support second-hand use and circular economy
Easy to Recycle	Support material recovery at end of the product’s life to reduce new resource extraction and pollution
Energy Efficient	Reduce product’s CO2 footprint and operating costs
Resource Efficient	Reduce product’s use of raw materials and energy during production and life-cycle

Eco-Design for Sustainable Products is a key EU sustainable policy design tool and each product covered by the ESPR is required to have a Digital Product Passport (DPP) which enables improved processing within the supply chain and includes detailed information to empower consumers to understand the environmental footprint of their purchases (European Commission, 2022b). It’s safe to say the large majority of products available today do not meet these criteria. Given this far-reaching legislative effort, we have an opportunity to re-imagine how every product can be an eco-product and how they circulate in our circular economy. The Director of the French environmental NGO Pôle Eco-conception describes eco-design as “[l]ocated at the interface between consumption and production patterns, eco-design helps to structure the market for products and services using a life cycle approach and tangible criteria” (Chouai & Mayer, 2024).

The European Commission is set to propose a legally-binding 90% emissions reduction from 1990 levels to be achieved by 2040; however, political pushback by governments is likely to weaken the goal; the EU climate chief Teresa Ribera is looking for ways to find pragmatic solutions, by, for example, considering some use of carbon credits (thus far, all the goals needed to be achieved within the borders of EU; buying carbon credits from places outside the EU would not be counted as emissions reduction) (Taylor, 2025; Weise, 2025).

EU Policy Context Timeline'.

The above chart shows how the European Union has been on a path of climate legislation transformation.

The above chart illustrates the European “Green Deal”.

In the countries that make up the European Union (EU), a wide range of legislative proposals, targets, organizations, and goals have existed for decades. It’s not that the EU didn’t have an overarching environmental policy before; rather it was vague and filled with loop-holes. Upcoming laws cited above aim to harmonize approaches to sustainability and raise standards for all members states, in turn influencing producers who wish to sell in the EU common market. National governments need to adapt EU legislation to local contexts. For example Estonian government adopted the Estonian Green Deal Action Plan (Eesti Rohepöörde Tegevusplaan) (Eesti Vabariigi Valitsus, 2022). From the legislative perspective, NFRD (Non-Financial Reporting Directive) is replaced by CSRD (Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive) and ESRS reporting is the standard to meet CSRD requirements.

The EU is also concerned with supply-chain deforestation. The ESPR (Sustainable Products) and EUDR (European Union Deforestation Regulation) work hand-in-hand as part of EU’s legislative efforts to promote sustainability. EUDR applies to all products placed on the market from December 2024 and June 2025 for small businesses. The EU also has a taxonomy of environmentally sustainable economic activities published by the Technical Expert Group (TEG) on sustainable finance, as detailed in the report by (EU Taxonomy for Sustainable Activities, n.d.). The proposal for a Nature Restoration Law by the European Commission requiring member countries to restore 20% of EU’s degraded ecosystems by 2030 and full restoration by 2050 has not yet passed (as of writing) (Scientists Urge European Parliament to Vote for Nature Restoration Law, 2023) and is facing a backlash (David Pinto, 2023).

Certainly Europe is not the only region legislating to promote sustainability. There are legislative efforts around the world and several jurisdictions have passed laws which aim to reduce the environmental impact of products throughout their lifecycles. In the US, the Inflation Reduction Act provided funding to development of de-carbonizing technologies and includes plans to combat air pollution, reduce green house gases and address environmental injustices (Rajagopalan & Landrigan, 2023). In Australia, the Product Stewardship (PS) scheme also includes an investment fund targeted at increasing the recycling rates of specific products (Australian Government, 2024). Australia, Japan, and Taiwan all have sustainable procurement schemes, prioritizing greener products in public purchases (Australian Government Department of Finance, 2025; Ministry of the Environment, Government of Japan, 2000; The Ministry of Environment of Taiwan, 2024).

Sustainability policy context is shifting around the world. I was torn whether to place politics under sustainability or design, and decided for the latter - as sustainability is mostly descriptive, using science to measure and present the real situation, while design is prescriptive: codifying decisions about how do we live - in products and services. Design is political.

Beyond Recycling: Default to Return, Repair, Reuse

• Gigerenzer (2008) “simple heuristics built from basic rules; how heuristics are selected and structured in social and physical environments; concept of ecological rationality to identify the environmental conditions under which particular heuristics succeed or fail”

• (Gigerenzer, 2008) argues that heuristics - basically, rules of thumb - can make more accurate predictions about the future than statistical tools such as Bayesian and regression models. In the practice of design for sustainability, this translates to making use of the power of defaults: displaying the most sustainable option as the default - the oft-quoted example being green power as the default choice on the German energy markets (Antonides & Welvaarts, 2020; Kaiser et al., 2020). Several research projects of plant-based, vegan and vegetarian food defaults at (university) canteens show 45-58% increase in sustainable choices across studies (Boronowsky et al., 2022; Erhard et al., 2023; Ginn & Sparkman, 2024; A. W. Zhang et al., 2024).

The universal recycling symbol creator Gary Anderson created the symbol when he was an architecture student at USC (University of Southern California) in 1970 at the age of 23, inspired by Silent Spring, Earth Day, the Bauhaus, Bucky Fuller, Spaceship Earth, printing presses, and the Woolmark logo for wool industry certification, and even the Mobius strip, for a competition held by a packaging firm that was making paper containers for packaging (Swap Society, 2023).

Eco-Modulation: Incentive Design for Extended Producer Responsibility

Eco-modulation is a legislative innovation, which makes harder to recycle items more expensive for the producer. Recycling fees take into account eco-design: an item from a single material is easier (cheaper) to recycle than product from composite materials. Eco-modulation makes the hidden cost of hard-to-recycle formats directly visible on the invoice.

While Taiwan doesn’t yet have a specific eco-design law, there are various pieces of legislation promoting circular economy. Already in 1988, Taiwan implemented an Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) scheme, followed by a recycling system (initially focused on electronic items) in 1998 (Chong et al., 2009). Eco-design initiatives in Taiwan started at least as early as 1994, when Taiwanese companies and universities noticed international sustainability trends and began to implement their own sustainable design initiatives (Jahau Lewis Chen et al., 2005).

The key to comparing Product Stewardship, Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR), and Eco-Design is the scope, as illustrated in the chart below. While Product Stewardship (PS) and Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) deal mostly with the end of the product life-cycle (they are reactive), including their disposal and recycling (EPR going a step further than PS by shifting the responsibility to the producer), eco-design moves sustainability up the design chain (being pro-active), setting standards for making better products - in essence, attempting to design-out the waste.

Popular blogs such as (Kohli, 2019) and (Lose, 2023) offer many suggestions how designers can help people become more sustainable in their daily lives yet focusing on the end-user neglects the producers’ responsibility - termed Extended Producer Responsibility or ERP in waste management studies.

Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) is a policy tool first proposed by Thomas Lindhqvist in Sweden in 1990 and described in detail in his PhD thesis (Lindhqvist, 2000; Lindhqvist & Lidgren, 1990), aimed to encourage producers take responsibility for the entire life-cycle of their products, thus leading to more eco-friendly products. In essence, Extended Producer Responsibility enables companies to be resposible for the entire life-cycle of the product. In California, part of the EPR regulation is a large pool of funding for cleaning up historic pollution resulting from industry Moolman (2024).

Nonetheless, EPR schemes do not guarantee circularity and may instead be designed around fees to finance waste management in linear economy models (Christiansen et al., 2021). The French EPR scheme was upgraded in 2020 to become more circular (Jacques Vernier, 2021). In July 2024, Latvia was the 4th EU country to join an textile-EPR scheme (“New EPR Requirements for Textiles in Latvia from July 2024 On,” 2024). Strong consumer protection legislation (such as EPR) has a direct influence on producers’ actions. For example, in (HKTDC Research, 2022), the Hong Kong Trade Development Council notified textile producers in July 2022 reminding factories to produce to French standards in order to be able enter the EU market.

In Europe, there’s large variance between member states when in comes to textile recycling: while Estonia and France are the only EU countries where separate collection of textiles is required by law, in Estonia 100% of the textiles were burned in an incinerator (as of 2018) while in France textiles are covered by an Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) scheme leading to higher recovery and recycling rates (European Commission. Joint Research Centre., 2021; Nordic Council of Ministers, 2020). Yet, some countries like Germany (75%), Netherlands (45 %), and Denmark (43%), which have no specific EPR scheme for textiles, report higher collection rates than France, which with EPR collected only 38% of the textiles, however recovered 95% of that through reuse and recycling (Eurostat, 2022; Towards 2025 - Separate Collection and Treatment of Textiles in Six EU Countries, 2020).

The success of EPR can vary per type of product. For car tires, the EPR scheme in the Netherlands claims a 100% recovery rate (Campbell-Johnston et al., 2020). (Peng et al., 2023) finds that the Carbon Disclosure Project has been a crucial tool to empower Chinese auto-producers to adopt ERP schemes. Technological advancements play a big role in recycling rates, as even badly sorted materials can increasingly be recovered using AI; one example being Greyparrot AI, which notes that even in the most advanced countries, 40% of waste sorting is still manual, opening an opportunity for automation (Natasha Lomas, 2024).

While recycling rates are improving, (Steenmans & Ulfbeck, 2023) argues for the need to engage companies through legislation and shift from waste-centered laws to product design regulations. In the same vein, and in the spirit of EU’s EPR regulations, (Ruiz-Pastor & Mesa, 2023) proposes an integrated product repairability index (PRI). (Lenovo, 08-29-22) suggests rethinking product design entirely to inspire consumers expect more from the devices they buy. (Duriez et al., 2022) shows how simply by reducing material weight of the product, it’s possible to design more sustainable transportation. However, the devil is often in the details. (Formentini & Ramanujan, 2023) study of Design for Circular Disassembly (DfCD), introduces a Disassembly Effort Index (DEI) to measure the disassembly time in seconds; their case study of the End-of-Life (EoL) of an electrical kettle showed ignoring realistic EoL failures (such as rusted screws), can lead to inaccurate recommendations for circular design parameters.

Packaging is a rapidly growing industry, expanding on the back of online shopping, which generates large amounts of waste materials, which if not reused or recycled, easily becomes garbage. Over 161 million tonnes of plastic packaging is produced every year (Bradley & Corsini, 2023). Already more than a decade ago, (“Detail-Rich Sustainable Packaging Product Database Is an Industry First,” 2010)proposed a database of green packaging to compare hundreds of sustainable packaging materials and guide designers through environmental, performance, and cost trade-offs in one unified tool, in order to help producers choose better packaging - yet the problem is far from solved. More recently, (Bradley & Corsini, 2023) developed an analytical framework of key sustainability factors, from an overview of 107 studies on reusable packaging, finding customer acceptance, high return rates, supply-chain shortening, and system standardisation, as the key factors critical to unlocking reusable packaging solutions at scale. A survey by PMMI, the Association for Packaging and Processing Technologies, among industry professional, found legacy equipment, higher material costs, and supply consistency as the top barriers to sustainable packaging; in turn, vital enablers were clear vendor guidance, proven material and quipment solutions, and customer demand (“Challenges and Opportunities in Sustainable Packaging Today,” 2022). In response to legacy equipment issues, (“Sulapac – Replacing Plastic,” n.d.) a large producer of packaging, has proposed a wood-based, microplastic-free composites to serve as drop-in replacements for plastics; a material even compatible with existing molding, extrusion, and thermoforming production lines, while slashing cradle-to-gate CO₂ emissions and preventing microplastic pollution.

In food packaging specifically, (Ada et al., 2023) identified distinct challenges from consumer acceptance to material-supply mismatches, collection logistics, and regulatory gaps, underscoring the multifaceted barriers to circular food packaging. Over 85% of companies in the “protein industry”: meat, poultry, seafood, and alternative proteins have some type of sustainability inititive (“Protein Brands and Consumers Alike Focus on Sustainability,” 2022). Yet, having sustainability programs does not make a company sustainable, case in point being Coca Cola in the beverage industry. (Lerner, 2019) describes Coca Cola’s plastic pollution problem, based on leaked audio, detailing how Coca-Cola was exposed for lobbying against container-deposit laws - aka Deposit Return Schemes (DRS), - aiming to misrepresented recycling as a complete solution; strategies that stalled effective legislation and maintained a “green” façade despite obstructing real sustainability progress.

The “Plastic Waste Makers Index” report lists large corporations which produce plastic waste globally and provides some useful statistics: single-use plastic rose by 6 million tonnes from 2019 to 2021, while just 3 million tonnes of recycling capacity was planned by 2027 (as of the report date, 2023); in total, single-use plastic generated 450 million tonnes of CO2 emissions per year; up to 98% of the single-use plastic was produced from virgin pertrochemicals, while 2% was from recyled material; meanwhile in Taiwan, tje Far Eastern New Century company boosted recycled content from 2% to 11% per cent in 2021 and plans to double its recycling capacity (Minderoo Foundation, 2023). (Yap et al., 2023) Singapore disposes of 900,000 tonnes of plastic waste each year, out of which only 4% is recycled. Single-use plastics make up 44-68% of all waste mapped by citizen scientists (Kiessling et al., 2023).

Scenario-Building: Avoiding the Worst Futures and Design for Quality of Life

Scenario-building is a key tool for sustainability, because sustainability is so complex. Sustainable design cannot always predict certain outcomes - instead, it can make use of scenarios to prepare for several possibilities. In sustainability, there are rarely good choices. Rather it’s a question of avoiding the worst choices. One existing tool, which has been widely used, is the En-ROADS climate change solutions simulator; governments, organizations and individuals around the world have used it explore climate scenarios based on interactive changes and visualizations (Climate Interactive, n.d., 2023; Creutzig & Kapmeier, 2020; Czaika & Selin, 2017). Likewise, (Rooney-Varga et al., 2019) shows the effectiveness of The Climate Action Simulation in educating users about success scenarios. Life Cycle Assessment and Environmental Impact Analysis are another set of useful tools to provide eco-design scenarios (de Otazu et al., 2022).

While traditional economic thinking is based on a conflict between nature and development, some new holistic models find there is potential for synergy between economic, social, political, cultural, and environmental metrics. For example, (Kaklauskas et al., 2023)‘s multi-criteria analysis of 169 countries and 238 cities, finds 71% average correlation between Climate Change and Country Success (C3S) and Quality of Life (C3QL) indicators. In a similar vein, (Rieger et al., 2023) develops an integrated science of wellbeing, linking humans’ psychological, biological, societal and environmental domains to guide research and public policy, based on interactions between domain experts.

Wellbeing Economy Governments is an example of country-level collaboration in sharing expertise on sustainable development, looking to bring post growth strategies and policy frameworks to the mainstream. The concept of a wellbeing economy focuses on human and ecological wellbeing rather than material growth since 2018 and includes Finland, Iceland, New Zealand, Scotland, Wales, and Canada as founding members of the network (Fioramonti et al., 2022).

(Popkova et al., 2022) argues that SDGs need to discussed in their totality and uses factor analysis to link SDGs to institutions and digital technologies; findings include SDG 3 (Good Health and Well-Being) and SDG 17 (Partnerships for the Goals) progress through institutions in developed countries and are most impacted by digital technologies and digital knowledge index, meanwhile SDG 16 (Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions) makes the most headway in developing countries, which are starting from a lower base. Likewise, the German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS) has built a tool to connect SDGs and their 169 targets to NDCs (Nationally Determined Contributions), looking for synergies for effective climate action plans and sustainable development strategies, visualizing a clear skew which SDGs receive the most climate‐related commitments - SDG 2 (Zero Hunger), SDG 6 (Clean Water and Sanitation), SDG 7 (Affordable and Clean Energy); meanwhile SDG 14 (Life Below Water), and the SDG 3 social goals discussed above, SDG 4 (Quality Education) and SDG 5 (Gender Equality), are the least adressed in climate plans (Dzebo et al., 2023).

Eco-Design is about improving processes and optimizing resources. While the goal of reducing harm is shared, the specifics will depend on the industry. (Van Doorsselaer, 2022) Defines ecodesign as “design for X” in a circular economy, thinking through the life cycle of a product, tools, materials, production, use, and end-of-life phases.

In wine-making, (Manzardo et al., 2021) presents an Italian vinery case study, where a redesigned Merlot red wine procedure reduced in environmental impacts from fuel and pesticide use in vineyards; the 8-step procedure included calculating the product’s environmental footprint and following the ISO 14006 standard, titled “Environmental management systems — Guidelines for incorporating ecodesign”. Finding uses for by-products, can improve sustainability even more. (Iñarra et al., 2022) designed a circular scheme for brewery left-overs, producing feed ingredients for aquaculture; in a further step, using life-cycle assessment (LCA) and optimising logistics, reduced the aquafeed’s environmental footprint also by 6%.

In architecture and the built environment, (Munaro et al., 2022) conducted a comprehensive reviews of ecodesign 288 articles, identifying Design for Adaptability and Disassembly as the most inclusive strategies, coining a new term DfAD; a framework linking DfAD with lifecycle assessment tools is a promising are for research to support sustainable construction.

In pharmaceuticals, (Bassani et al., 2022) proposes an approach to eco-design using life-cycle assessment: optimizing packaging types, alternative materials, transport, and weight reduction. A follow-up study from the same group in 2023 extended the eco-design to a full cradle-to-grave assessment and evaluated end-of-life alternatives (Bassani et al., 2024).

In the printing industry, (Miyoshi et al., 2022) takes the example of ink toner bottles and applies Life Cycle Simulation to show in a case study how standardized compatibility between older and newer systems can save resources and results in sustainability savings, highlighting how remanufacturing is an important strategy in circularity for reducing CO₂ emissions and life cycle costs.

While these examples underline the industry-specifity of eco-design, some authors attempt to come up with mores holistics approaches. For instance (Ruiz-Pastor et al., 2022) developed “CN_Con”, a metric for conceptual design, trying to measure circularity and novelty in conjuction, by analysing product functions, durability, material origins, and end-of-life, while at the same time supporting creative and circular design solutions in early stages.

On an international level, looking at companies operating on the European Single Market, (Arranz et al., 2022) conducted a large-scale study using machine learning on firm survey data from 870 organisations across diverse economic sectors, aqcuired from the 2015 EU Public Consultation on the Circular Economy conducted by European Commission, comparing coercive pressures (regulations, subsidies, grants), normative pressures (industry standards, professional networks), and mimetic pressures (competitive imitation), finding normative and mimetic pressure only enhance sustainability, if coercive pressure already exists - i.e. regulations are a key point of leverage. In summary, enacting laws which support sustainability can shift complex systems with many parties towards a circular economy, and be enhanced by additional voluntary forces. However, a comparative analysis of OECD green growth indicators for the periods 2004–2005 and 2019 across EU member states found that green transformation do not correlate directly with development level - instead each country’s unique socio-economic context plays a role: governance quality and income distribution shape the effectiveness of regulatory frameworks, suggesting that coercive policies must be tailored to national circumstances in order to reinforce circular-economy adoption at scale(Cheba et al., 2022).

Thinking in Systems to Re-Design Industries or Provenance and Traceability

As of 2025, circular economy is a tiny part of the world economy. (Circle Economy, 2022) reported in 2022 only 8.6% of world economy was circular and 100B tonnes of virgin materials was sourced every year. An early pioneering innovator, (Jackson, 1996) showed through detailed case studies how preventive environmental management, redesigning industrial production at the source can avert pollution, laying the conceptual groundwork for today’s circular-economy models. Many companies are investing into transforming their processes. “[T]ransition to a low carbon economy presents challenges and potential economic benefits that are comparable to those of previous industrial revolutions” (Pearson & Foxon, 2012).

Futurists and visionaries adept at naming things have already listed the 5th, 6th, and even the 7th industrial revolution, pointing at robotics, quantum computing, nanotechnology, and more, looking at current trends and building scenarios for 2050 to envisioning a world with convergence of bio-based and mineral-based technologies, widespread sustainability, and energy-abundance (Chourasia et al., 2022; Ruiz Estrada, 2024). If indeed, we’re in an industrial revolution, it’s possible to re-design entire industries, and that is exactly the expectation sustainability sets on businesses. Across all industries, there’s a call for more transparency. Conversations about sustainability are too general and one needs to look at the specific sustainability metrics at specific industries to be able to design for meaningful interaction. There’s plentiful domain-specific research showing how varied industries can develop eco-designed products.

I use the lens of sustainability - a complex term - to look at how design can contribute to eco-friendly products, advocating a diverse set design methods as a toolbox, where one can pick a suitable tool to match the problem. While AI allows us to look at a larger number of design scenarios than previously feasible, there are many approaches to design for sustainability, with varied design practices that may be relevant at different times in the process. Designing for sustainability is fundamentally a hopeful act, imbibed with the belief that a healthier world is possible - because health and sustainability are intrinsically connected. As this research is practice-oriented (i.e., my goal here is to find design approaches that could influence my prototype), I will focus on some fields of design which I hope relevant, fruitful, or contextual to my project.

Eco-Design, Circular Design, Design for Circularity, Cradle-to-Cradle Design, Green Design, Regenerative Design, Climate-Responsive Design, Life-Centered Design, Design for Human Rights, Multispecies Design, Designing for Health - designing for sustainability has been called with many names in diverse contexts of use, using a diversity of approaches, with subtle differences of emphasis and nuance, with same general goal of being more sustainable. While EU legislation chose Eco-Design as the overarching title, researchers and practitioners discuss all of the above on a frequent basis. (Ceschin & Gaziulusoy, 2016) gives a comprehensive overview of the main themes of sustainable design and the main contributions and limitations in the well–researched “Evolution of design for sustainability: From product design to design for system innovations and transitions”.

Human-Centered Design is the grandfather of design with attitude. There’s even an ISO standard for human-centered design, with the designated code ISO9241-210, revised as ISO 9241-210:2019 titled “Ergonomics of human-system interaction” and up for revision soon (ISO standards are reviewed every 5 years). Some of the key takeaways include “Understanding and specifying the context of use”, “Involving users throughout design and development”, “Specifying user requirements”, “Evaluating designs”, “Multi-disciplinary Collaboration”, “Iterative process” and “Continual Improvement”, and finally - usability is not enough, the design should provide a user experience (UX) for human “emotional responses and satisfaction” (ISO, 2019).

While Human-Centered Design focuses exactly on what it says - humans - Life-Centered Design recognizes human impact on our surrounding environment as well - making sure we include non-human animals among our stakeholders. This is where we are getting on the territory of sustainability. While Human-Centered Design is ever popular, the effect humans are having on biodiversity is rarely considered when designing. “[T]he design phase of a physical product accounts for 80% of its environmental impact” notes(Borthwick et al., 2022) in their framework for life-centered design. If we’re including other lifeforms among our stakeholders, what can we learn from them? Biomimicry is about being inspired by nature while Biodesign focuses on design involving biology in the design itself. Janine Benyus, who coined the word Biomimicry (Benyus, 2009) looks at very practical cases of innovation where engineers and biologist meet and (Dicks, 2023) provides a much more philosophical account of following the example of nature. Focusing on the financial sector, (Thomas & Mantri, 2022)’s philosophical account advocates for an “inside-out” design pattern, much like natural systems, starting from the smallest structures to guarantee resilience and survival, instead of trying to control their external environment. In a similar vein, Material Ecology is the wording preferred by the architect Neri Oxman based at the MIT Media Lab working with biomaterials as a proponent of Nature-Centric Design that adheres to the principles of ecological sustainability with both an ecologically conscious mindset and practical toolset (Hencz, 2022). Language and our mental concepts shape our reality, which makes language-creation an important tool for sustainability. Neri Oxman’s expressions in her (World Economic Forum, 2016) interview introduce some new vocabulary: “ecology-indifferent”, “naturing”, “mother naturing”, “design is a practice of letting go of all that is unnecessary”, “nature should be our single client”, which reminds me how self-invented language gives un child-like freedom to imagine new worlds.

Regenerative Design suggests dematerializing (digitizing) economies is not enough to be sustainable (by reduction of physical impact). Design should look beyond reducing harm and find avenues to regenerate damaged or even completely destroyed natural systems – ecosystems, biodiversity, land, forests, lakes, rivers - natural habitats.

Multi-Species Design refers to the idea of considering non-human life-forms as stakeholders of our design. (Metcalfe, 2015)‘s PhD Disseration titled “The devastating effects that unsustainable design practices have on the natural world and other species with whom we share this planet” gives a good overview of the work done is this branch of design. In a similar vein, Biodiversity Inclusive Design (BID), developed by (Hernandez-Santin et al., 2023) through a systematic review of 14 design frameworks, presents a ’participatory ladder for non-humans’; including core design principles that position species’ needs within urban planning to achieve a biodiversity-positive multi-species environment. Multi-species design and participatory design can work together. (Haldrup et al., 2022) examines how participatory design can include non-human species as co-creators of the urban commons; drawing on cases from Copenhagen, Denmark and the Viskan River (in the textile town, Borås, Sweden), the authors highlight sensory and aesthetic encounters, and attempts to perceive the agency of non-human species in a collaborative design processes (The University of Melbourne, Australia & Roudavski, 2020). Multi-Species Design has also entered the art-world thanks to (Marcus, 06-11-23) who uses artworks to think about how material design strategies, surface textures, substrates, and bio-inspired composites, can foster biodiversity and interspecies cohabitation in the built environment. A very practical example helps one visualize this field the best. (Kosová et al., 2023) introduces the BioGeo Ecotile, a eco-engineering tile combining pits, holes, grooves, and crevices to mimic natural rocky shores and provide multi-species living-environments; deployed on rock armour and flood walls along Edinburgh’s coast in Scotland, Ecotiles supported significantly higher intertidal species richness compared to smooth tiles, helping animals make a life there. (Selvan et al., 2023) goes deep into data modeling multi-variate calculations on how to build buildings, which support ecology, coming up with a general framework for the architecture of building envelopes, that resulted in 20% higher local species richness and up to 77% higher abundance for individual species.

In most cases, designing for sustainability makes use of systems thinking, underlining the importance of looking at the entire life-cycle of a product or service. (Rossi et al., 2022) shows how introducing sustainability early in the design process and providing scenarios where sustainability is a metric, it’s possible to achieve more eco-friendly designs. Yet, calculating what’s sustainable is hugely complex because decisions may have unforeseen ramifications. To take a single example (Nuez et al., 2022) shows how electric vehicles may increase CO₂ emissions in some areas, such as Canary Islands, where electricity production is polluting. In sum, sustainable design encompasses all human activities, making this pursuit an over-arching challenge across all industries and all human activities with the complex interdependence contained within these interactions. (Engkvist, 2024) calls for Design Sociology, design should take account the product’s effect on society, giving the example of highly individualized understanding of individualized psychology and dopamine cycles for creating social media, while disregarding the societal effects, such as spread of misinformation. Lack of sustainability in the design process is a bug in the design approach.

Service Design, (Ceschin & Gaziulusoy, 2016) shows how design for sustainability has expanded from a product focus to systems-thinking focus placing the product inside a societal context of use. For example (Cargo Bike FREITAG, n.d.), recycled clothing maker FREITAG offers sustainability-focused services such as cargo bikes so you can transport your purchases and a network for shopping without payment = swapping your items with other members, as well as repairs of their products. Loaning terminology from service design, the user journey within an app needs to consider each touchpoint on the way to a state of success. Designing for Trust, Weinschenk (2011) says “People expect most online interactions to follow the same social rules as person-to-person interactions. It’s a shortcut that your brain uses to quickly evaluate trustworthiness.”

Speculative Design can also help us imagine non-anthropocentric (Edwards & Pettersen, 2023; Hupkes & Hedman, 2022) as well as dystopian futures (Pinto et al., 2021). First introduced by (Dunne & Raby, 2013) in their seminal book, the field aims to question the intersection of user experience design and speculative fiction. (Barendregt & Vaage, 2021) explores the potential of speculative design to stimulate public engagement; thought experiments can spur public debate on an issue chosen by the designer. Phil Balagtas, founder of The Design Futures Initiative at McKinsey, discusses the value of building future scenarios at his talk at Google. His favorite example, the Apple Knowledge Navigator, first appeared in an Apple vision video in 1987 and took two decades to materialize in the real world. It was inspired by a similar device first shown in a 1970s episode of Star Trek as a magic device (a term from participatory design), which then inspired subsequent consumer product development. It took another two decades, until the launch of the iPhone in 2007 - a total of 40 years. Iteration has been the mainstay of software design, incrementally improving the user experience, through a continuous feedback loop; yet speculative design can help explore and imagine possible futures by manifesting them in stories, artifacts, and scenarios, empowering stakeholders to prepare for challenges and shape policy, as well as ethical frameworks, beyond strictly product-centered thinking (Google Design, 2019).

Participatory Design and Speculative Design can be complementary as in the work of (Neuhoff et al., 2023), used together to focus on engaging users deep in the design process to truly understand their needs, contexts and interactions on a non-superficial level. For both speculative and participatory design, the cost and makes it into a niche activity. Generative AI holds the promise to allow designers to dream up and prototype quicker. In order to build a future, it’s relevant to imagine and critique a future. By being quickly generate prototypes, once can test out ideas with the future users involving more of the community and stakeholders. To be able to build something, one first needs to imagine it; imagination is crucial for change. Speculative Design helps us envision future scenarios and be critical of the current reality, by taking an alternative view-point. A related field, Design Fiction, goes even further by creating narratives and artifacts that immerse participants in detailed visions of possible futures, blending storytelling and tangible experiences. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a source of many fantastic innovations, used to host The Design Fiction group (from September 2013 to May 2018), which designed projects to “stimulate discussion about the social, cultural, and ethical implications of emerging technologies”, coming up with design such as a Brain-Controlled Interface for Spermatozoa, the Human Perfume, capturing the smell of the people significant to the author, as well as Pop Roach, for designing edible cockroaches (Design Fiction group, 2018; A. Liu, 2017).

Climate-Responsive Design embeds a building within the environmental constraints of a place and looks for opportunities use the land, wind, sun, local materials, and local vernacular history and culture when considering a design. Architect Susanne Brorson suggests sustainability should be considered in the earlier phases of design instead of trying to fix problems later, discussing climate-responsive design principles (EVM maaarhitektuuri keskus, 2019). The sentiment is echoed by (S. Lee & Doevendans, 2011) who edited a volume on sustainable approaches of world-renowned architects: “The principles of sustainable design are rooted in the building’s relationship to the site and its environmental conditions such as topography, vegetation, and climate.” The pioneering book Architecture of the Well-Tempered Environment laid out ideas for integrating environmental concerns as part of architecture already in 1980s (Banham, 1999).

Cradle-to-Cradle Design uses systems thinking focusing on the reuse, re-manufacturing, and finally - recyclability - of products. The Taiwanese Design Research Institute (TDRI) hosted a Nordic Circular Design Forum in Taipei, where Scandinavian circular design practicioners shared projects from several industries, highlighting how design requires building relationships; it’s not feasible to create a sustainable product by oneself, as it takes a whole ecosystem (TDRI, 2021; “台灣設計研究院（TDRI ） on Instagram,” 2021). Durability is an important dimension for sustainability. High quality durable products are more sustainable as they last longer and less likely to be thrown away. Forming an emotional bond with the product makes it feel more valuable (Zonneveld & Biggemann, 2014). (Chapman, 2009) argues in his seminal paper (and later in his book) for “Emotionally Durable Design”, the simple idea that we hold to things we value and thus they are sustainable. We don’t throw away a necklace gifted to us by mom, indeed this object might be passed down for centuries. (Rose, 2015) has a similar idea, where “Enchanted Objects” become so interlinked with us, we’re unlikely to throw them away. This has implications for sustainability as the object is less likely to be thrown away.

As the above shows, there are many partially overlapping design words created by different people for diverse purposes. Design vocabulary may be created for distinguishing a particular type of design from another - or to market oneself as the creator of the word. There are designers who define / brand themselves by their design method. Design Studies, a field that studies design as a subject.

Student Essentials: Consumer Goods, Clothes and Food

Food, clothes, and consumer goods (I’m omitting housing and transport here) are part of the immediate environmental impact of college students. I will here focus on 3 industries that are relevant for college students.

Fast-Moving Consumer Goods

Fast-Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) also known as Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) are large global congloremates operating with low margins and high volumes (Toh, 2024). The largest of them have several billions in revenue (Kenton, 2024). Rise of e-commerce has pushed logistics companies to increase delivery efficiency to keep up with FMCG sales (Deliverect, 2024).

In China, while there are signs of young Chinese consumers valuing experiences over possessions, the raw sales growth numbers show consumerism is only increasing (Claudio-Quiroga et al., 2025; Hui et al., 2025; Jiang, 2023; X. Zhang, 2025).

Clothes and the (Fast) Fashion Industry

Just like Fast-Moving Consumer Goods, fast fashion operates with low margins and follows consumer trends. Young people are the largest consumers of fast fashion (“Young Consumers’ (Complicated) Love For Fast Fashion In 3 Stats,” n.d.). (In European Environment Agency, 2022 European Environment Agency (EEA)) estimates based on trade and production data that EU27 citizens consumed an average 15kg of textile products per person per year. (Textile Exchange, 2021) Fashion industry revenue is above USD 1.5 trillion; COP26 policy calls for 45% cut in emissions by 2030. The European Commission wants to reduce the impact of fast fashion on EU market (ERR, 2022). There are also other local policy initiatives aiming to tackle the waste problem. For example the New Standard Institute’s proposed “Fashion Act” to require brands doing business in New York City to disclose sustainability data and set waste reduction targets (Emily Chan, 2022b). In California, the “Garment Worker Protection Act” covers 45000 garment workers with wage and safety safeguards (Lily Mindful + Active Living on Instagram, n.d.).

In terms of total figures, the 2.4 Trillion USD fashion industry contributes 2%-8% of total global green house gas (GHG emissions); 100B USD is lost to lack of recycling; contributes 9% of microplastics (Adamkiewicz et al., 2022). (“New Standard Institute,” n.d.) similary estimates the apparel & footwear account for > 8 % of global GHG and could rise up to 60% by 2030.
(Centobelli et al., 2022) reports fashion industry year uses 9B cubic meters of water, 1.7B tonnes of CO₂, 92 million tonnes of textile waste. (Emily Chan, 2022c) as things stand now, fashion companies can’t be held accountable for their actions (or indeed, their lack of action), driving calls for extended producer responsibility. (Köhler et al., 2021) Globally 87% of textile products are burned or landfilled after 1st consumer use. (Millward-Hopkins et al., 2023) shows how 50% of the textile waste in the UK is exported to other countries, often to be dumped as trash in landfills or burned. (Tian Macleod Ji, 2024) found fast fashion propels 26 million tons of clothing in China’s landfills annually. In Ghana, research across several dumpsites revealed up to 12% of the landfill consisted of textile waste (Gyabaah et al., 2023). The (“Clean Clothes Campaign,” n.d.) decries how “[t]he mainstream fashion industry is built upon the exploitation of labor, natural resources and the knowledge of historically marginalized peoples”; in 2018, 3/5 of the 100 billion garments produced globally ended up in landfill within one year of sale. (FashionChecker, 2023) reports none of the top global apparel brands pays a living wage; 60% of garment workers are women earning below-men wages. Yet, for certain countries this production is crucial; the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association reports 24% annual growth in global market and makes up a whopping 81% of the exports of the country (BGMEA Home, n.d.; Daily Sun, 2022).

It’s hard to make improvements to a system in an opaque environment. (Emily Chan, 2022a) writes there’s not enough transparency in the fashion industry - greenwashing is prevalent - and introduces Fashion Revolution’s Fashion Transparency Index, in order to tackle the very issues mentioned above (Fashion Revolution Foundation, 2022). Similarly, (Wikirate, 2022) presents itself thus: “Among the Index’s main goals are to help different stakeholders to better understand what data and information is being disclosed by the world’s largest fashion brands and retailers, raise public awareness, educate citizens about the social and environmental challenges facing the global fashion industry and support people’s activism”. Already in 2018, Sourcemap launched the “Open Apparel Registry”, a crowd-sourced digital map of apparel factories, creating a standardised database of factory names and addresses to enhance supply-chain transparency (Mowbray, 2018). Sustainable fashion company evaluations platform Good On You rated 5821 brands in 2023; yet most large labels with climate targets publish no progress data (Good On You, 2023). The Fossil-Free Fashion Scorecard graded 43 brands; 15 scored “F” and the sector average was a “D” (Stand.earth, 2023). Making use of these indexes, YouTuber (imperfectidealist, 2020) proposes a 7-step checklist to help consumers spot greenwashing, focused on transparency, such as if the producer has published a full list of suppliers. While consumer understanding of sustainability is growing, it’s not neccesarily very specific; for example (Mabuza et al., 2023) shows consumer knowledge of the effects of apparel coloration is very limited.

Nonetheless, change is happening. Qima, a company which provides inspection and certification services for the fashion industry, found that in 2023 inspection demand for products coming from China rose 5.4% year-on-year, specifically 13% from the US, 27% from Germany, 32% from the UK, and 69 % from Mexico, demonstrating the global nature of the business, while near-shoring and re-shoring accounted for 10% of the U.S. and EU-based buyers’ procurement, underscoring the growing need for supply chain visibility and adaptability (QIMA, 2024). One example of a blockchain-based fibre-to-garment traceability solution, live with 100+ brands, is (Textile Genesis, n.d.); other blockchain-based approaches are discussed at length in a dedicated section.

There’s a growing know-how on how to design sustainable fashion and which materials to use; for instance the “Handbook of Footwear Design and Manufacture” includes a special chapter on green design specifically for shoes (Leung & Luximon, 2021). The “Circular Design HOW” toolkit launched 2021 to guide Baltic designers in cradle-to-cradle approaches for circular textiles (Eesti Disainikeskus I Estonian Design Centre, 2021). Estonian Academy of Arts’ sustainable fashion open course reached 9 European universities in 2022, covering eco-materials and ethical sourcing (Eesti Kunstiakadeemia, 2022). And certainly there are many more examples globally.

However, for ethical fashion practices to reach scale, materials do matter a lot. (Textile Exchange, 2023) reports global fibre output reached 116 million tonnes in 2022; polyester alone was 54% percent of the total. Access to better materials is crucial and industry collaboration can raise the bar for everyone, such as the Better Cotton Initiative (Better Cotton, 2023). One example of an ethical brand is (“Sheep Inc. - Softcore Radicals,” 2023), which promises to sequester 14kg of CO₂e per kg of wool (footprint per finished sweater is 0.04 kg CO₂e), by using wool from Merino sheep with regenerative practices. Robert Gentz, the Co-CEO and co-founder of Zalando, a large European online retailer, says fast fashion must disappear within the next decade (citing 40% of wardrobes are never worn), launching a separate brand caled Zign, built around sustainable materials and ethical production practices, with at least 20% recycled content and 50% eco-friendly materials per item (Remington, 2020; Storbeck, 2021). Improved technology for recycling is in the pipeline; for example (Infinited Fiber, 2023; Karila, 2024) produces a premium fiber called Infinna, using its pulp-to-fibre recycling tech, from waster materials - and is being used by sustainable brands such as Patagonia.

The story of Patagonia has inspired many to see that a financially successful, eco-friendly fashion business is a possibility; yet Patagonia’s 1 % for the Planet pledge that has delivered about USD 140 million to grassroots environmental groups since 1985, seems like a drop in the bucket compare to the scale of the problem (Chouinard, 2005). The “Generation Rewear” documentary documents the strides newer sustainable fashion brands are making; yet a survey made for the film showed 64% of UK consumers wear items only once, leading to 350000 Tonnes of clothing landfilled yearly (Vanish UK, 2021).

Digital Product Passports will be mandatory for fashion under EU Eco-design and EPR rules between 2026 and 2030, enabling ethical shopping (“Transparency and Sustainability Platform - Renoon,” 2023). New apps make alterations and repairs made easy: SOJO door-to-Door service raised USD 2.4 million pre-seed funding for a clohtes repairs service, cutting waste and emissions (SOJO - Door-to-Door Clothing Alterations and Repairs, 2023).

Food

Food production is a large greenhouse gas emitter. Global warming causes droughts and extreme weather, wars and conflicts, which in turn increases the volatility in food prices (Eshe Nelson et al., 2023). (Nabipour Afrouzi et al., 2023) reports the agricultural sector contributes approximately 25% of the total CO₂ emissions and 13.5% of the total global anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. (Poore & Nemecek, 2018) suggests a slighthly higher 26% of carbon emissions come from food production. (Saner et al., 2015) reports dairy (46%), meat and fish (29%) products making up the largest GHG emission potential. Livestock products (meat) are 15% of agricultural foods valued at €152 billion in 2018 globally (Patel et al., 2023). (Bailey & Eggereide, 2020) shows how the Norwegian government plans to increase salmon production 5x by 2050; the demand for food is increasing.

Re-designing the industrial food systems for an increasing global population is a challenge - yet improvements are possible at every step of the way. For example, an Italian retail supermarkets worried about their carbon footprint ran a pilot program, which cut food + packaging waste emissions from 436 kg CO₂e to 339 kg CO₂e per store per year (total 22% emissions reduction) (Marrucci et al., 2020). Perennial (multi-year) crops are less carbon intentsive, reducing inputs of gasoline, labor, etc (Aubrey Streit Krug & Yin Lu, 2023), yet large agritech companies like Monsanto rely on selling seeds annually for profits putting them at odds with perennial crops; single-year seeds have led to farmer suicides when crops fail in poor communities.

Supply chain innovation in food industries may enable more transparency. Provenance and traceability of food has implications for sustainability and health. Food fraud is a contentius issue which requires new science- and legislation-based solutions. One example is fake honey, meaning synthetic honey, or actual honey fraudulently blended with cheaper sugar syrup, which can pass some laboratorty tests, requiring improved technology, such as DNA-analysis to find real honey (ERR, 2023; Song et al., 2020). China is the world’s largest honey producer, making about 24% of world total (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 2023) and has been implicated in tampering with their product. Apimondia, the International Federation of Beekeepers’ Associations, canceled its annual honey award because of wide-spread supply-chain fraud, as they were unable to guarantee the authenticity of honey (Ungoed-Thomas, 2024). The same is true for cocoa beans, which are at high risk from food fraud (Fanning et al., 2023).

Complex supply chains make seafood (marine Bivalvia, mollusks) logistics especially prone to fraud, leading to financial losses and threats to consumer health (Santos et al., 2023). (Chang et al., 2021) fish fraud is a large global problem but it’s possible to use DNA-tracking to prove where the fish came from. In Taiwan, the 27 KURA SUSHI branches sold more than 46 million plates of sushi in 2019. Illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing (IIU) fishing is widespread; the EU is adopting countermeasures (D. E. Kim & Lim, 2024). Likewise,(Katie Gustafson, 2022) proposes a “Uniform traceability system for the entire supply chain” for seafood and (Mamede et al., 2022) proposes fingerprinting of Sea Urchin for seafood tracing.

In total, the world consumes around 200 million tonnes of fish and seafood every year, including wild catch and aquaculture (fish farming) (Ritchie & Roser, 2021). Precise and recent data about the fishing industry is hard to come by. However, by some estimates, industrial fishing accounts for approximately 75% of the entire global catch, the rest being artisanal fishing; 26% of the catch is caught using bottom trawling and dredges, which are highly damaging to the natural environment; and 10-12% using mid-water (pelagic) trawls, which are somewhat less intrusive; around 20-30% of the fish is caught using large nets; around 6-7% using industrial longlines (both surface level and deep-set); and the rest is caught using a variety of other fishing gear (Amoroso et al., 2018; Cashion et al., 2018; Hilborn et al., 2023; Jacquet & Pauly, 2022). About 10.8 % of total catch is discarded; bottom-trawling alone accounts for 46% of discards (Pérez Roda et al., 2019). (Muñoz et al., 2023) calls for banning of bottom trawling. (Sala et al., 2021) notes that only 2.7% of the world ocean is highly protected and calls for a globally coordinated effort to protect marine biodiversity.

Given these statistics, (Springmann et al., 2021) proposes veganism is the most effective decision to reduce personal CO₂ emissions. The food sovereignty movement, born in the late 1990s, champions everyone’s right to healthy and sustainable food, focusing on local food systems to bring producers and consumers closer together, planting seeds and growing food in the cities, countryside, and even indoors (Stall-Paquet, 2021). In a similar vein, the Farm to Fork European Union policy proposes to shorten the supply chain (meaning less change for fraud and less emissions) from the producer to the consumer and add transparency to the system (Financial Times, 2022). In Japan, one startup in this space is “Secai Marche”, self-described as “Asia’s Food Supply Chain”, operating a cold chain and fulfillment platform, connecting farmers across Japan and Southeast Asia to more than 500 retailers, deliverling over 4000 distinct products (SKUs), including vegetables, fruits, eggs, seafood, across its transparent system, with AI-based demand-forecasting and optimized truck-routing (Catherine Shu, 2023).

However, a local Taiwanese study refutes the idea that local “farm-to-fork” sourcing is greener in terms of carbon footprint and environmental impacts; taking a case-study of ice-cream production in Taiwan, the authors finds sourcing ingredinents from local, small-scale farming in Taiwan, is more carbon-intenstive in comparison with ingredients imported from large-scale industrial farms in New Zealand and Sri Lanka, even if accounting for the higher transportation emissions (Huang et al., 2025).

(lulovicovaEnvironmentalAssessment2023?) apply a territorial life cycle approach to evaluate local food policies in Mouans Sartoux, France, and demonstrate that simply reducing food miles is not enough to ensure a lower environmental footprint; the biggest drivers of total impact are changes in farm practices, aggregation methods, retail infrastructures, and procurement contracts, rather than proximity alone - local supply chains can outperform global chains if local food policies combine geographic proximity with improvements in on-farm efficiency, logistics, energy use, and local retail systems, to realize true sustainability gains.

It comes down to what is compared to what.

A local Taiwanese vertical farm, “Yes Health iFarm” (largest indoor vertical farm in Asia as of 2018), spans a 15 stories and employs 130 staff; they use LED lighting tailored to specific plant type, growing 30 varieties of edible plants (e.g. arugula, ice plant, mustard leaf, etc), with high quality and ‘distinctive crunch and flavor’; the yield is 100 times larger than in traditional farming, while using only 1/10 of the water; the factory is extremely clean, with zero pesticide residues, zero heavy metal contamination, zero parasites, zero e coli, low nitrates, low bacteria - demonstrating a high-tech driven approach can provide exceptional resource efficiency and quality (Renée Salmonsen, 2018).

Even when problems with food are discovered, solutions might take years to emerge. For example, IARC (International Agency for Research on Cancer) warns aspartame (artificial sweetener found in many soft drinks) could cause cancer, confirmed by 2 separate studies; yet the international standards for aspartame have yet to be updated 2 years later (Fu, 2024; Riboli et al., 2023; Rigby, 2023).

Food is also about cuisine and culture; foods become popular if we hear stories and see cuisine around a particular crop (Aubrey Streit Krug & Yin Lu, 2023). Food is about enticing human imagination and taste buds. That is to say, improving food systems is not only about technical details. Culture, community, cuisine, and storytelling can all play a part to have better quality food and reduce food waste. While perhaps over-romanticizing mushrooming, Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing’s ethnographic exploration in her book about the matsutake mushroom illustrates how foragers and distributors collaborate across damaged ecosystems to sustain a cross-border commodity chain becoming a sign of ecological resilience, where disturbed forests altered by logging and industrial activities; mushrooms form a “gift economy” that connects rural pickers in Oregon, Japan, China, and Finland with affluent urban consumers around the world; the price is high due to the foraging nature of the collection (some sources call it the most expensive mushroom in the world, sold at over $1000 USD per kg, no intensive farming practices involved); the author believes this is a type of collaboration that does not depend on endless economic growth (personally, I would describe it as economics of luxury goods) - in any case, it does remind us that cultural narratives and local know-how (e.g. cultural products) do influence food and perhaps can play a small part in more resilient and sustainable food systems (Remley, 2025; Tsing, 2015; Yang et al., 2008).

Coming back to apps, there are several initiatives aimed at reducing food waste by helping people consume food that would otherwise be thrown away, including Olio and Too Good To Go.

ResQ Club saves food waste by selling left-over foods cheaply.

Food saving apps

Name
Karma
ResQ Club	[@kristinakostapLEVITASONAUus2022] ResQ Club in Finland and Estonia for reducing food waste by offering a 50% discount on left-over restaurant meals before they are thrown away.
Kuri	[@hajejankampsKuriAppThat2022] Less impact of food
Social media groups (no app)

As with any contentius issue, when it comes to food, people have differing points of view. (Eriksson et al., 2023) discusses best practices for reducing food waste in Sweden and (Röös et al., 2023) identified 5 perspectives in a small study (n = 106) of views on the Swedish food system.

Perspective on food systems in Sweden from [@ROOS2023107623].

Perspective	Content
“The diagnostic perspective”	“All hands on deck to fix the climate”
“The regenerative perspective”	“Diversity, soil health and organic agriculture to the rescue”
“The fossil-free perspective”	“Profitable Swedish companies to rid agriculture and the food chain of fossil fuel”
“The consumer-driven perspective”	“A wish-list of healthy, high-quality and climate-friendly foods”
“The hands-on perspective”	“Tangible solutions within the reach of consumers and the food industry”

In Practice: Sustainability Begins in Software

Humans live in artificial environments where most things are designed by humans. Design encompasses most everything in our daily lives. The experiences we take part in are increasingly created based on some type of data. Digital Sustainability refers to the idea that Digital enables Sustainability: information pertaining to emissions would flow through the economy not unlike the carbon cycle itself.

Designing user interfaces for sustainable interactions means incorporating data and tools to enable designers to make decisions which reduce the emissions of their designs. Software is key to building more sustainable products, already for decades (Gupta et al., 2023). Increasingly, AI-assisted design is where sustainability starts: AI provides the parameters for sustainability. Companies like AutoDesk have introduced CO_2e calculations inside their design software, helping designers reduce material usage, energy consumption, CO_2e emissions, while increasing potential for reuse and recyclability (Mike Haley, 2022). As AI tools and data quality improve, a increasing number of parameters for deciding the suitable life cycle design, will become available (Singh & Sarkar, 2023).

(Pan & Nishant, 2023) proposes 6 dimensions of AI usage in Digital Sustainability. The chart is purely illustrative to highlight the value of AI for sustainability; it’s not based on numeric metrics.

Part of digital product design are design systems to keep consistency across the experience yet the latest (Zeroheight Team, 2025) survey (n = 294) shows that over 53% of design systems are minimally automated or not automated at all - and only 10% of the designers actively use AI, with 36% having experimented with AI-driven design. These findings underline, there’s still work to be done involving young HCI designers in AI-oriented workshops to show support them building the future of UI/UX (Battistoni et al., 2023).

• (A Comprehensive Guide to Design Systems Inside Design Blog, n.d.)

• (M. Suarez et al., n.d.)

• “design system reduces design debt, accelerates development, and fosters a cohesive user experience across products.”

Designers working at Google have been designing in collaboratiom with AI for a while and already in 2019 published the People + AI Guidebook, outlining best practices for designing with AI - to make human-centered AI products (People + AI Guidebook, n.d.).

Data-Driven Design

I believe it’s possible to learn from the growth of digital platforms and superapps to see how data-driven design could enable sustainability to become mainstream. Sustainability touches every facet of human existence and is thus an enormous undertaking. Making progress on sustainability is only possible if there’s a large-scale coordinated effort by humans around the planet. For this to happen, appropriate technological tools are required.

Digital platforms are focused on Growth Design, how to attract and retain users. Superapps are the latter stage of the economies of digital platforms, where previously vertically targeted apps expand horizontally to provide an ever-increasing number of services. For digital products (including superapps) the main application of interaction design is for growth in usage, how to get more people (user journey and conversion funnels) to use the product i.e user acquisition, retention, engagement, and monetization and keep using it (retention and engagement), often optimizing on-boarding, features, and personalization (Kende, 2023; Steger, 2019).

Platform economy companies popularized and expanded Data-Driven Design in the service of growth marketing (also known colloquially as growth hacking). Capturing User Data was part of this strategy which enabled improving the products. Digital Product Design is increasingly data-driven. Digital platforms operate a design as a process in a continuous feedback loop, where measurements, experiments, predictive analytics and personalization form a data-drive design culture. As we humans go about our daily business, governments and companies track our activities using various technologies, which produces massive amounts of user interaction data.

Platform economy companies are the capture and use large amounts of data from users. Data is useful for designing better products. Designing for high retention (users keep coming back). Network Effects, the more people use a platform, the more valuable it becomes. Platforms that continuously add features (provided consumer legislation allows it) may eventually evolve into superapps, which are useful for providing services for a wide category of human needs. Bundling many services under one super-brand. Superapps are possible thanks to Nudge, Economies of Scale, Network Effects, Behaviour Design. Large Digital Platforms have a very small number of workers relative to the number of users they serve. This creates the necessity for using automation for both understanding user needs and providing the service itself. Creating a good product that’s useful for the large majority of users depends on Data-Driven Design.

Design is as much about how it works as it’s about the interface. There are many approaches to design - from playful to practical to critical and to data-driven. Nonetheless, many types of design share a common goal designing for a good user experience. Digital product design can be seen as a specific discipline under the umbrella of Experience Design. In (Michael Abrash, 2017) Laura Fryer, Meta Oculus augmented reality incubation general manager, said as much: “People buy experiences, not technology.”

Simplifying.

Personalization: the largest businesses today (measured in number of users) design the whole user experience in order to reach Scale. Intelligent Interfaces use interaction design to provide relevant and personalized information in the right context and at the right time. Popular consumer platforms strive to design solutions that feel personalized at every touchpoint on the user journey (to use the language of service design) at the scale of hundreds of billions of users. Businesses care about Total addressable market (TAM), serviceable addressable market (SAM), target audience (TA), and use hypothesis and validation for iterating on features, to reach these lofty goals.

• Personalization, Personal User Experience. social apps require personalization, trust and k-factors (sharing and inviting your friends). (Baron, 2023; B. Kim, 2023).

Circular Design for a Circular Economy

The bible for Circular Economy, the “Cradle to Grave” book was released over 2 decades ago; change is slow, but change is happening (McDonough & Braungart, 2002).

Circular design is only possible if supply chains become circular as well. (Hedberg & Šipka, 2021) argues digitization and data sharing is a requirement for building a circular economy. Yet, sometimes technology fails. Nonetheless, many current technological hurdles can be overcome by supply chain professionals who are experts in connecting supply streams (Dull, 2021). (Oikos Denktank, 2021) argues circular design requires new skills, one of which is circular material procurement.

To take a specific industry, digitization of mining systems allows enhance the reliability of supply chains, and provides better supply chain transparency (CRM Alliance, 2020). This does not only include tracking the critical raw materials, but also the social aspects surround the mine. While this rarely makes the international media, (Eerola, 2022) maps 20 ongoing mining and mineral-exploration disputes in Finland, calling for systematic dispute monitoring, in order to maintain a social license to operate.

The complexity of resource and delivery networks necessitates more advanced tools to map supply chains (Knight et al., 2022). The COVID19 pandemic - and resulting blockages in resource delivery - highlighted the need to have real-time visibility into supply chains (Finkenstadt & Handfield, 2021). Moreover, in the context of the EU Plastics Strategy, “the European Commission has launched a pledge to increase the use of recycled content to 10 million tons by 2025”.

• “Connecting the Value Chain, One Product at a Time”, “Circularise aims to overcome the communication barrier that is limiting the transition to a circular economy with an open, distributed and secure communications protocol based on blockchain technology.”*

Already in 2020, a company founded to solve these exact issues, Circularise, and funded in part by the EU Commission H2020 SME Instrument, developed a privacy-focused blockchain-based data exchange protocol for tracing plastics across supply chains, aiming to boost transparency and circularity (Circularise, 2020a). Circularise launched an “Open Standard for Sustainability and Transparency” based on blockchain technology & Zero-knowledge Proofs” (Circularise, 2020b). Circularise is currently the market leader in providing Digital Product Passports (Stretton, 2022).

It’s important in which structure data is stored, affecting the ability to efficiently access and manage the data while guaranteeing a high level of data integrity, security, as well as energy usage of said data. Blockchains are a type of shared database where the data is stored in several locations with a focus on making the data secure and very difficult to modify after it’s been written to the database. Once data is written to the blockchain, modifying it would require changing all subsequent records in the chain and agreement of the majority of validators who host a version of the database. Blockchain is the main technology considered for accounting for the various inputs and complex web of interactions between many participants inside the supply chain networks.

Several startups are using to track source material arriving to the factories and product movements from factories to markets and there are hundreds of paper researching blockchain use in supply change operations since 2017 (Dutta et al., 2020). Blockchains enable saving immutable records into distributed databases (also known as ledgers). It’s not possible to (or extremely difficult) to change the same record, only new records can be added on top of new ones. Blockchains are useful for data sharing and auditing, as the time and place of data input can be guaranteed, and it will be easier to conduct a search on who inputted incorrect data; however the system still relies on correct data input. As the saying goes, “garbage in, garbage out”.

There are several technologies for tracking goods across the supply chain, from shipping to client delivery. Data entry is a combination of manual data input and automated record-keeping facilitated by sensors and integrated internet of things (IoT) capabilities. For example (Ashraf & Heavey, 2023) describes using the Solana blockchain and Sigfox internet of things (IoT) Integration for supply chain traceability where Sigfox does not need direct access to internet but can send low powered messages across long distances (for example shipping containers on the ocean). (Van Wassenaer et al., 2023) compares use cases for blockchains in enhancing traceability, transparency and cleaning up the supply chain in agricultural products.

Blockchain supply chain companies as of summer 2023 include.

Company	Link	Literature	Comments
Ocean Protocol	oceanprotocol.com
Provenance	provenance.io
Ambrosius	ambrosus.io
Modum	modum.io
OriginTrail	origintrail.io
Everledger	everledger.io
VeChain	vechain.org
Wabi	wabi.io
FairFood	fairfood.org
Bext360	bext360.com
SUKU	suku.world	[@millerCitizensReserveBuilding2019] SUKU makes supply chains more transparent	Seems to have pivoted away from supply chains

Electronics contain valuable materials which can be recovered. Meanwhile, (K. Liu et al., 2023) reports e-waste is growing 3%-5% every year, globally. (Thukral & Singh, 2023) identifies several barriers to e-waste management among producers including lack of awareness and infrastructure, attitudinal barriers, existing informal e-waste sector, and the need for an e-waste license.

(Builders for Climate Action, 2021) finds embodied carbon averages 250 kg CO₂-eq per m² of floor area for new Canadian homes, varying from 175-400 kg CO₂-eq per m² based on building material choices; one standard house emits 32–75 t CO₂-eq; the authors believe however, using biogenic materials (e.g. naturally grown materials including wood, bamboo, straw, hemp, cork, and mycelium), could make the houses carbon negative, storing 9–60 t CO₂-eq emissions - enough to meet the 2030 of the entire building sector.

• (McGinty, Thu, 08/06/2020 - 11:25): How to Build a Circular Econom

• “Circular Petrochemicals” (Lange, 2021)

Tracking Transport Supply Chains: Towards Sustainable Supply Chains

“Secrecy is the linchpin of abuse of power…its enabling force. Transparency is the only real antidote.” Glen Greenwald, Attorney and journalist. (Greenwald, 2015)

In the most general sense, supply chain transparency enables stakeholder accountability (Circularise, 2018; Doorey, 2011; Fox, 2007). Products are made from resources distributed across the planet and transported to clients around the world which currently causes high levels (and increasing) of greenhouse gases. “Transport greenhouse gas emissions have increased every year since 2014” (Climate Change Mitigation, 2023). Freight (transport of goods by trucks, trains, planes, ships) accounts for 1.14 gigatons of CO₂ emissions as per 2015 data or 16% of total international supply chain emissions (Wang et al., 2022).

Share of CO₂ of CO₂ emissions by type of transport globally [@statistaGlobalTransportCO22022].

Type of Transport	Percentage
Passenger cars	39%
Medium and heavy trucks	23%
Shipping	11%
Aviation	9%
Buses and minibuses	7%
Light commercial vehicles	5%
Two/three-wheelers	3%
Rail	3%

In shipping, (Matthew Gore et al., 2022) reports the International Maritime Organization (IMO) targets cutting CO₂ equivalent emissions in shipping 50% by 2050 compared to 2008. In aviation, [Platzer (2023)], a scientist working on the Apollo space program, calls for emergency action to develop green aviation.

Tracking Ethics & Cruelty: Factories Can Become Transparent

(Waters, 2015) analyses the most effective strategies to improve animal welfare and advance animal rights against a monopolistic producer: finding negotiation, targeted direct action, and awareness campaigns condemning low-welfare practices, to be the most successful.

• Data transparency may help reduce cruelty by improving traceability. Traceability and animal rights. Animal rights vs animal welfare. Ethereum blockchain and animal rights. “Blockchain can provide a transparent, immutable record of the provenance of products. This can be especially useful for verifying claims made about animal welfare. For example, products claiming to be”free-range,” “organic,” or “sustainably sourced” could have their entire lifecycle recorded on the blockchain, from birth to shelf, allowing consumers to verify these claims.” Cruelty free brands. BCorp. ESG. Increase your investment point by matching with your contribution /. Point of Sales integration (know the SKU you buy). Integrate to the financial eco footprint (no need to scan the product). What’s the name of the startup that does this? Precision Fermentation and Cultivated Meat: Meat products without farm animals. Transparency about the polluting factories where the products come from.. the product journey. Tracing emissions from factory pipes… what’s the app? virtual factories. Carbon-neutral factories “made in carbon-neutral factory” list of products. Factories should be local and make products that can be repaired. Doconomyoffers an Åland Index that links financial transactions to carbon impact. Planet Factory.

Superapps Already Integrate Shopping, Savings, and Investing

• Could there be Sustainability Superapps? How to design sustainability superapps? Lots of options in a single app. (Fleet Management Weekly, 2022) “Sustainability and superapps top Gartner’s Top 10 2023 Trends List”. (Dave Wallace, 2021) “The rise of carbon-centric super apps”. (goodbag, 2023) “goodbag: Sustainable Super App”. What would a sustainable investment platform that matches green investments with the consumers look like, if one saw the side-by-side comparison of investment vehicles on their ESG performance? Also (Bernard, 2022).

Superapps are prevalent in Asia, with China, South-East Asia, Korea, Japan, and India leading the way.(Giudice, 2020) finds WeChat has had a profound impact on changing China into a cashless society, underlining how one mobile app can transform social and financial interactions of an entire country. (Shabrina Nurqamarani et al., 2020) discusses the system consistency and quality of South-East Asian superapps Gojek and Grab.

Superapp	Origin	Markets	Metric	Payments (Wallet)	Savings	Investing	Users	Date	Source
微信 / WeChat (Tencent)	China	China	Monthly Active Users (MAU) combined 微信 (China) & WeChat (International)	Yes	Yes	Yes	1,4 billion	2024	@tecentTecentHoldings20242024
支付寶 Alipay (Ant Group)	China	China	Annual Active Users (AAU)	Yes	Yes	Yes	1.3 billion	2020	@geUpdateAlibabasAnt2020
美團 Meituan	China	China	Annual Transacting Users (ATU)	Yes	No	No	700 million	2024	@jingMeituan0369020242025
PhonePe	India	India	Registered Users (Lifetime)	Yes	Yes	Yes	500 million	2023	@phonepePhonePeCrosses5002023
LINE	Japan	Japan, Taiwan, Indonesia, Thailand	Monthly Active Users (MAU)	Yes	Yes	Yes	200 million	2023	@lycorporationLYCorporationTakes2023
Tata Neu	India	India	Members	Yes	Yes	No	27 million	2023	@shindeTataNeu202023
Nubank	Brazil	Brazil, Mexico	Customers	Yes	Yes	Yes	114 million	2024	@polloNuHoldingsLtd2025
Zalo	Vietnam	Vietnam	Monthly Active Users (MAU)	Yes	No	No	75 million	2023	@nguyenVietnamsFirstUnicorn2023
Paytm	India	India	Monthly Transacting Users (MTU)	Yes	Yes	Yes	100 million	2023	@vermaPaytmQ3FY242024
M-Pesa	Kenya	Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa, Afghanistan, Lesotho, DRC, Ghana, Mozambique, Egypt, Ethiopia	Active Customers	Yes	Yes	No	34 million	2024	@safaricomSafaricomsMPESAHits2024
Mercado Pago	Argentina	Argentina, Uruguay, Mexico, Chile	Monthly Active Users (MAU)	Yes	Yes	Yes	61 million	2023	@mercadolibre2024ImpactReport2024
PicPay	Brazil	Brazil	Active Customers	Yes	Yes	Yes	35 million	2023	@oostBrazilianFinTechPicPay2024
Cash App (Block)	USA	USA	Monthly Active Users (MAU)	Yes	Yes	Yes	56 million	2023	@kazaninsWhyCashApp2024
KakaoTalk	Korea	Korea	Monthly Active Users (MAU)	Yes	Yes	Yes	48 million	2024	@leeKakao2024Revenue2025
GoTo (Gojek/Tokopedia)	Indonesia	Indonesia	Annual Transacting Users (ATU)	Yes	Yes	Yes	51 million	2023	@gotoTransformationProgres2023
Revolut	UK	UK / EU	Customers	Yes	Yes	Yes	50 million	2024	@revolutRevolutHits502024
Careem	UAE (Aqcuired by US-based Uber and Etisalat but still keeps a separate brand)	United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Iraq, Kuwait, Morocco Bahrain, Pakistan, Egypt, Morocco	Customers	Yes	No	No	70 million	2024	@careemCareems2024Wrapup2025
Grab	Singapore / Malaysia	SEA	Monthly Transacting Users (MTU)	Yes	Yes	No	41 million	2024	@grabholdingslimitedGrabReportsFourth2025
Rappi	Colombia	Argentina, Colombia, Brazil, Chile, Mexico	Users	Yes	Yes	No	30 million	2023	[@phocuswrightSuperConnectedRappi2023; @brownColombiasFirstUnicorn2025; @layaSoftBankBackedAppRappi2024]

Global overview of superapps (or near-superapps) compiled from official company reports (IR, Press Releases), news reports, and company websites; various metric types (MAU, MTU, Annual Users, Customers, Registered Users) vary by company reporting and are reduced into a single “users” metric for simplicity. Each figure is sourced from official company reports, press releases, or investor disclosures. If no recent official update was available (as in the case of Alipay’s 2020 figure), the latest known official figure is provided. All values and dates reflect the latest data as of 2025.

*Not-Quite-Superapp	Origin	Markets	Metric	Payments (Wallet)	Savings	Investing	Users	Date	Source
Uber	USA	Global	Users per month	No (Only for ride-hailing)	No	No	171 million	2025	[@uberUberAnnouncesResults2025]
Bolt	Estonia	Global	Lifetime users	No (Only for ride-hailing)	No	No	200 million	2025	[@garciaBoltAcquiresDanish2025]

Uber is creating an all-purpose platform for travel; only 4.1% of rides were electric (Levy, 2023). In the UK, Uber launched and option to book flights, moving to a door-to-door travel solution where the same app brings you from home to the airport, the flight, and your final destination (Uber UK, 2023).

Superapps offer a platform with key infrastructure such as payments already included, where ecosystem of miniapps thrive (Heath, 2021; Perri, 2022). Alipay, originaly a payments app, has build the digital infrastructure to provide thousands of services to billions of users across China. 59 million people use 支小寶 (Zhixiaobao), an Al-based assistant inside of Alipay, which can order taxis and meals, but also interact with the Ant Bridge, Ant Ant Bridge, Ant Fortune and Ant Insurance services inside Alipay (Finextra, 2024). (Vecchi & Brennan, 2022) discusses the strategies Chinese apps are taking to expand to international markets.

Superapps are honeypots of data that is used for many types of behavior modeling. Guido Becher from Rappi defines their super-app as “customer-centric high frequency multi-vertical ecosystem” this enables cross-promotion, for example a hotel in Argentina targeted people people who buy almond milk on Rappi with their offer of a yoga retreat (Phocuswright, 2023; G. Suarez et al., 2021) suggests using alternative data from super-apps to estimate user income levels, including 4 types of data: Personal Information, Consumption Patterns, Payment Information, and Financial Services. (Roa et al., 2021) finds super-app alternative data is especially useful for credit-scoring young, low-wealth individuals. However, data privacy is always a concern. For instance, Kakao Pay was found guilty of mishandling 40 million users’ data by handing it over to Alipay without user consent; Alipay owns a 32 percent stake in Kakao Pay (K. Lee, 2024).

There are also many aspiring superapps, companies which aspire to build multi-vertical platforms but are hindered by various challenges. Telegram integrates Web3 apps into the chat and supports investing into cryptocurrencies without ever understanding the complex technology of wallets. (Pylarinou, 2024). Likewise, LINE is integrating Web3 technologies based on the Kaia blockchain to provide decentralized mini-apps (dapps) for the LINE chat userbase and integrates with the LINE Pay wallet for financial interactions (Hintzy, 2025).

Platform Economy marketplace companies like Airbnb and Uber, among many others, match demand to offer, in the process optimizing how our cities work. The massive amounts of data generated by these companies are used by smart cities to re-design their physical environments, such as the collaboration between Bolt and the city of Seville in Spain (Bolt, 2025).

Platform economy concepts from [@katzNetworkExternalitiesCompetition1985; @oinas-kukkonenPersuasiveSystemsDesign2009; @tiwanaResearchCommentaryPlatform2010; @chenBusinessIntelligenceAnalytics2012]

Platform Economy Enablers	Pros	Cons
Network effects	The more people use a platform, the more valuable it becomes both for the company and the user.	Data is not portable or difficult to migrate. You can’t leave because you’ll lose the audience. There’s a lock-in effect.
Scalability
Data-driven Design
Behaviour Design

Personalization: Personality Engineering and Persuasion

Kazuo Ishiguro’s book “Klara and the Sun”, narrated through the eyes of an AF (artifical friend) - Klara - describes the feeling of loneliness of a robot; the story offers a cautionary counterpoint, illustrating how even the most loyal and emotionally attuned AI companion could be perceived as uncanny or insufficiently human (at least, this is how it happens in the book); this example, while fictional, underscores the delicate balance required when designing AI companions for sustainability: persuasion must feel personal, but not performative (Ishiguro, 2021; Life Lessons From Books, 2023; Waterstones, 2021).

AI labs are putting a lot of effort into engineering likable AIs, working on honesty of the modelds, teaching them to convey their own uncertainty (Anthropic, 2024a, 2024b); Which sometimes can go wrong. ChatGPT-4o overnight became your biggest fan, which users found annoying; the abrupt shift to an overly enthusiastic persona drew user backlash (Mollick, 2025). And it also felt jarring, if you already got used to a certain persona and it suddenly changed.

• (Konings, 2020)

• (“Method Podcast, Episode 18,” n.d.)

• (Atomic Design by Brad Frost, n.d.)

• AI gives designers new tools. In AI development, design is called alignment. What is the role of an AI Designer? (Linden, 2021) “Amanda Linden explains that “AI capabilities might take 2 to 3 years to develop” and that for AI designers the primary deliverable is “clarity for engineers on how the technology could be applied” rather than a visible UI feature. She outlines five core tasks: Designing AI prototypes, Shaping new technology, Developing AI-centered products, Collecting data for AI to learn, and Designing AI developer tools ”

Interaction Design, according to (IxDF, n.d.; Kolko & Connors, 2010), who believe it’s still an emerging (and changing) field (at least it was in 2010) and there are many versions of definitions. I prefer to simply say: interaction design is about creating a conversation between the product and the user.

(Justin Baker, 2018) introduced the concept of Red Route Analysis, an user experience optimization idea inspired by the public transport system of London, focusing on the critical design paths which capture over 90% of users’ actions. Prioritizing the user journey of the most popular features is key to driving business metrics (“Interaction Design – How to Evaluate Interaction Costs and Improve User Experience,” 2021; Oviyam™, 2019; Xuan, 2022). Yet, (Richard Yang, 2021) argues “[i]nteraction design is more than just user flows and clicks”, underlining Miller’s Law that the average human can keep no more than 5-11 items in their working memory.

The concept of Social Objects is relevant for interaction design as people need something to gather around and discuss (Sharing.Lab, 2015). Another part of the toolset for interaction designers is also Narrative Design, because humans respond well to storytelling, making character design relevant to interactions. Stories help product designers focus on the stickiness of the product, meaning low attrition, meaning people keep coming back (Aidin Ardjomandi, 2025).

“Interaction design isn’t about how interfaces behave, it’s about how people behave, and then adapting technology accordingly.” - (UXPin, 2020)

This can mean that the product has character or literally - charaters. Large language models are able to assume the personality of any character that exists inside of its training data, creating opportunities for automated narrative design. (Appleton, 2023) pushes for more creativity in UX for AI, calling chatbots the lazy and obvious solution; there is much more to be done for integrating AI into UX. (Alethea AI, 2021) discusses writing AI Characters, creating a personality; stories start with a character. Noah Levin, one of the first employees and VP of Design at Figma, the most popular digital design app, believes AI is the next chapter in design, starting with small experimental AI-based plugins to becoming a core design platform capability, accelerating most design workflows (Figma, 2023).

The quality of AI-generated UX has improved rapidly. In 2020, less than 5 years ago (Parundekar, 2021)’s extensive guide on creating an AI products warned that an 80% accurate model would mean “1 in 5 user requests being unsatisfied”, underlining that a 1-second delay would break the UX flow for many users: AI peformance should be linked to UX metrics. It can be safely said, today’s AI products can already satisfy these requirements with ease.

Open Data Enables Interoperability

Data is the interface between idle resources and retail demand, which makes exchange of value possible. Yet often data is expensive, hard-to-get, and inaccessible. If done well, open data can enhance interoperability and enable collaboration (What Is Open Data?, n.d.).

While not officially a member, Taiwan is a proponent of Open Government Partnership (OGP), and has launched its Open Government National Action Plan, promoting open data, information transparency, and expanding inclusive public participation (Lab, 2021; Open Government Partnership, 2021). Taiwan’s Government Open Data Platform (資料開放平臺), managed by the Ministry of Digital Affairs, centralizes hundreds of datasets; from spatial information to energy use (Ministry of Digital Affairs, 2024). Open Knowledge International’s Global Open Data Index (GODI) ranked Taiwan as number 1 in its global index in 2017; the project has since been discontinued, so the ranking may be out of date in 2024 (Open Knowledge Foundation, 2017).

Other indexes do not include Taiwan in the TOP 10.

Data-driven design requires access to data, making the movement towards open data sharing very important. Some countries and cities are better than others at sharing data openly.

Examples of cities and countries that share data openly.

Country	Project	Reference
Sweden	Swedish open data portal	[@SverigesDataportal2025]
Malaysia	Malaysian open data portal	[@governmentofmalaysiaDatagovmy2025]
Singapore	Singapore ESG open data platform	[@monetaryauthorityofsingaporeMASLaunchesDigital2023]

For example the Open Data Portal of Malaysia shows a steady decline in Permanent Reserved Forests (PRF) for anyone interested, without having to submit any letter of request or communicate with officials; the data is just directly accessible and includes a permissive license (Malaysia, 2024). Likewise, in Singapore the Monetary Authority has launched an open data portal for ESG information (Monetary Authority of Singapore, 2023).

Context Design Enables Behavioral Nudges Towards Green Defaults

For several decades, marketing researchers have been looking into how to affect human behavior towards increasing purchase decisions in commerce, both offline and online, which is why the literature on behavioral design is massive. One of the key concepts is nudge, first coined in 2008 by the Nobel-winning economist Richard Thaler; nudges are based on a scientific understanding of human psychology and shortcuts and triggers that human brains use and leverages that knowledge to influence humans in small but powerful ways (Thaler & Sunstein, 2009).

The principles of nudge have also been applied to sustainability. For example, a small study (n = 33) in the Future Consumer Lab in Copenhagen by (Perez-Cueto, 2021) found that designing a “dish-of-the-day” which was prominently displayed helped to increase vegetarian food choice by 85%. Experiments by (Guath et al., 2022) focused on environmentally friendly online purchases in Sweden (n = 200) suggest nudging can be effective in influencing online shopping behavior towards more sustainable options. A study of behavior change in Australia at large university setting (N = 156) by (Novoradovskaya et al., 2021) found nudging behavioral change had a significant effect and the author suggested it may help to avoid some of the “16 billion paper coffee cups are being thrown away every year” globally (based on the abstract - I was unable to access the full paper).

Google uses nudges in Google Flights and Google Maps, which allow filtering flights and driving routes by the amount of CO₂ emissions, as well as surfacing hotels with Green Key and EarthCheck credentials, while promising new sustainability features across its portfolio of products (Sundar Pichai, 2021). Such tools are small user interface nudges which Google’s research calls digital decarbonization, defined by (Implement Consulting Group, 2022) as “[m]aximising the enabling role of digital technologies by accelerating already available digital solutions”.

In (Kate Brandt & Matt Brittin, 2022), Google’s Chief Sustainability Officer Kate Brandt set a target of “at least 20-25%” CO₂ emission reductions in Europe to reach a net-zero economy and the global announcement set a target of helping 1 billion people make more sustainable choices around the world (Jeni Miles, 2022). In addition to end–users, Google offers digital decarbonization software for developers, including the Google Cloud Carbon Footprint tool and invests in regenerative agriculture projects (Google, 2023; Inside Google’s Regenerative Agriculture Play Greenbiz, 2021). While Google has launched several climate-focused initiatives, it missed its CO2 reduction targets due to growing need for AI models (Worthington, 2025).

Google has launched eco–focused features across its range of products: search improvements for finding hybrid and electric vehicles; green routes for driving, in collaborating with local city governments sourcing data from the traffic lights to provide AI‐powered optimizations, which allows the map to suggest routes which would reduce fuel use and idling, complete with charging‐station info; alsp, better navigation for cyclists (showing scooter and bike‐share options) (“Google mostrará por defecto la ruta más ’verde’ en su GPS y ordenará los vuelos según su impacto ambiental,” 2021; Worthington, 2025). (Sarah Perez, 2022) shows how Google added features to Flights and Maps to filter more sustainable options. Yet, critics say updating the CO2 calculations’ math means Google started hiding emissions, which Google denies, pointing to higher accuracy of the carbon emissions modeling instead (“Google ’Airbrushes’ Out Emissions from Flying, BBC Reveals,” 2022). Google’s Nest Renew smart-home product helped people shift heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) to use to cleaner grid times (with an optional subscription service to match home electricity with renewable eletricity credits); in shopping searches, Google provides energy‐efficient appliance recommendations, helping users choose lower‐impact products at the point of purchase (Google, 2021; Justine Calma, Oct 6, 2021, 10:01 AM GMT+3).

Examples of CO₂ visibility in Google’s products.

Feature	Product	Nudge
Google Maps AI suggests more eco-friendly driving routes [@mohitmoondraNavigateMoreSustainably]	Google Maps	Show routes with lower CO2 emissions; reduce stopping by using data from traffic lights.
Google Flights suggests flights with lower CO2 emissions	Google Flights	Show flights with lower CO2 emissions
Wizzair Check carbon impact [@OffsetYourFlight]	WizzAir	Offset on Checkout

Google's view of flight emissions. Photo Credit: Copyright by Google 2023 referenced under fair use.

Some notable examples:

• Acuti et al. (2023) makes the point that physical proximity to a drop-off point helps people participate in sustainability.
• Wee et al. (2021) proposes types of nudging technique based on an overview of 37 papers in the field.

Types of nudge documented by [@WEE2021100364]

Name	Technique
Prompting	Create cues and reminders to perform a certain behavior
Sizing	Decrease or increase the size of items or portions
Proximity	Change the physical (or temporal) distance of options
Presentation	Change the way items are displayed
Priming	Expose users to certain stimuli before decision-making
Labelling	Provide labels to influence choice (for example CO2 footprint labels)
Functional Design	Design the environment and choice architecture so the desired behavior is more convenient

Alibaba’s Ant Forest (螞蟻森林) has shown the potential gamified nature protection, simultaneously raising money for planting forests and building loyalty and brand recognition for their sustainable action, leading the company to consider further avenues for gamification and eco-friendliness.

Table of Ant Forest assisted tree planting; data compiled from [@ZhuZiXun2017; @yangSwitchingGreenLifestyles2018; @unfcccAlipayAntForest2019; @wangFuelingProEnvironmentalBehaviors2020; @600MillionPeople2021; @zhangPromoteProenvironmentalBehaviour2022; @wangMotivationsInfluencingAlipay2022; @zhouUnpackingEffectGamified2023; @caoImpactArtificialIntelligence2023; @MaYiJiTuanESGBaoGao; @MaYiJiTuanGongBuZhongShu8Nian].

Year	Users	Trees	Area
2016	N/A	N/A	N/A
2017	230 million	10 million	N/A
2018	350 million	55 million	6500 acres??
2019	500 million	100 million	112,000 hectares / 66, 000 hectares?
2020	550 million	200 million	2,7 million acres?
2021	600 million	326 million	N/A
2022	650 million	400 million	2 million hectares
2023	690 million	475 million	N/A
2024	N/A	548 million	3.87 million hectares
2025	N/A	N/A	N/A

Ecosia is a search engine with an unconventional business models, investing all its profits into planting trees, pouring €92 million into climate action since 2009, planting 225 million trees worldwide (Garcia, 2025). The founder Christian Kroll recalls travelling in South America in 2006 and being shocked to see vast areas of rainforests converted into soy plantations, which inspired him to research the causes of deforestation and start Ecosia; the company employs partners around the world to improve soil, biodiversity, the water cycle, reducing droughts and floods, and monitor the treets it plants (Hirsh, 2021).

New user interfaces hold some potential for sustainability improvements. In particular, immersive communication technologies such as AR/VR hold the potential to reduce business travel, if productive meetings can be held online, reducing emissions. Likewise, visualizing large architectural projects as well as simulating product design in various industries can reduce cost by detecting problems in the 3D environment, early on in the design process, especially for collaboration in teams located all over the world (Varjo, 2025). Dynamic interfaces might invoke a new, natural-interaction-focused design language, for taking full advanced of extended reality (Hoang, 2022).

It’s a balancing at: while* AI enables generative UIs while users need some type of stability (think: text input stays in the same place but different types of interfaces appear within a clearly defined space).

Modes of interaction

Mode of Interaction
Writing
Speaking
Touching
Moving
Seeing

Learning from Quantified Self: Tracking Health and Lifestyle

An early example of how tracking personal data enables behavior change, are health and lifestyle tracking apps. Research on personal data tracking also known as quantified self or self-monitoring is abundant. There’s substantial academic evidence indicating that health tracking apps can have a measurable impact on user health behaviors and increase positive health outcomes. Wearable devices including the Apple Watch, Oura Ring, Fitbit and others, combined with apps, help users track a variety of health metrics. Recently, npj Biosensing even published a device from the MIT Media Lab that can track cells inside the human body from a wrist-worn device (Jang et al., 2025; Jarvis, 2025).

Apart from health, wearable devices have been used to track other metrics such as physiological parameters of students at school to determine their learning efficiency (Giannakos et al., 2020). Not only can health metrics be tracking, but exposure to pollution as well as personal carbon footprint, are all to some extent track-able (if not traceable).

Health and Fitness Tracking

Tracking one’s health and fitness is a familiar mode of quantified self, available to many smartwatch users - and even pretty much to anyone who has a phone made in the past decade. Apple is a leader in health tracking, releasing Apple Health in 2008 as an iOS 8 software feature and the Apple Watch in 2015, filled with health-focused sensors and features (Apple, 2022b). In 2022 Apple outlined plans for “empowering people to live a healthier day,” promising a new set of health-features with every release, such as the rumored temperature measurement inside of Apple AirPod earphones; and providing most of this data to developers through Apple’s HealthKit health metrics APIs, which app builders can tap into (Apple, 2022a, 2022c).

Use of wearables enables one to be more aware of one’s health. (Saubade et al., 2016) finds health tracking is useful for motivating physical activity. Blood glucose tracking is popular even for people without diabetes, to optimize their daily activity, including sports (“Is Blood Sugar Monitoring Without Diabetes Worthwhile?” 2021). Smart toilets offer unobtrusive monitoring of urine for one’s hydration levels as well as deeper insights on biomarkers as well as renal and nutritional health, through using sensor‐equipped seats (e.g. Withings’ U-Scan), which create a daily stream of data useful for trend analysis (Hermsen et al., 2023; Wagner & Boiten, 2023). Companies like NeuralLink are building devices to construct meaningful interactions baseded only on brain waves (EEG) (Musk & Neuralink, 2019).

Popular Strava sports assistant (over 100 million users) provides activity tracking and feedback (Strava, 2022).

Popular Strava sports assistant provides run tracking and feedback.

Sleep quality is an important aspect of both physical and mental health and many devices and apps focus on helping people get enough high quality sleep. There’s plenty of academic literature on how physical activity, as well as environmental aspects, such as air quality, affect sleep (X. Liu et al., 2019) tracks how wearable data is used for tracking sleep improvements from exercise. (Grigsby-Toussaint et al., 2017) made use of sleep apps to construct humans behaviors also known as behavioral constructs.

Being conscious of one’s mental health improves quality of life. (Tyler et al., 2022) surveyed the use of self-reflection apps in the UK (n = 998) finding a variety of methods from physical journaling in notebooks to smartphone-based note-taking apps, reviewing printed photo albums, and other digital tools.

Tracking one’s food intake helps understanding how healthy and nutrient-rich is one’s diet. (Ryan, 2022) uses the “capability methodology” framework, developed by economist Amartya Sen and later expanded by philosopher Martha Nussbaum, shifting focus from what people have (e.g. money, food, tools) to what they are able to do (human capabilities), which is used in the context of this paper to evaluate not only if the apps provide healthy food suggestions, but to what extent they expand a user’s freedom to live a healthy life; some forms of nudging inside the apps can support users’ goals however manipulative or coercive tactics serve only the app developers’ interests and are ethically problematic - the paper emphasizes the need for interaction design that respect users’ freedom, consider diverse personal choicecs, diverse bodies, cultures, and preferences, and environmental factors.

The Oura ring is an example of calm technology, providing helpful data without calling an attention to itself (Phelan, 2024). More recently, Oura Ring launched an AI-advisor to help explain the health data recorded by its device: deliver contextual and personalized guidance, remember past interactions while emphasizing privacy, and analyze both short- and long-term biometric trends (Team, 2025). There’s value in developing standardized fitness metrics, which different digital health providers can use to create dashboards with comparable data. Even with messy data, AI has a useful role as a translator between different standards. OpenAI is collaboratin with ex-Apple designer Jony Ive, to bring such ambient AI devices to live, which they believe has the potential for a new product category (WSJ News, 2025).

Pollution Exposure Tracking

Pollution exposure tracking may be considered a combination of health tracking and sustainability tracking. I’ve been tracking my personal air pollution exposure using the Atmotube Pro device attached to my backpack.

The above chart shows my exposure to pollutants while traveling, ranked from worst to best.

Towards Tracking Sustainability: Carbon Tracking and Personal Emissions Trackers

The above examples of tracking various aspects of health beg the question if one could track personal sustainability in a similar fashion. We have a limited carbon budget so calculating CO2e-cost could be expressly integrated into every activity.

Already in 2017, a project funded by the EU Horizon 2020 title “Instant Gratification for Collective Awareness and Sustainable Consumerism” piloted the concept of “political consumerism”, by enabling shoppers at 2 stores (Estonia and Austria) to experience real-time, personalized sustainability ratings on nearby products (by using a mobile app and bluetooth beacons to locate shoppers at shelf level, while maintaining privacy); instead of isolated choices, individual preferences were (environmental, health, political) aggregated into a community “sustainability signal”; the results indicated a statistically significant increase in sustainability awareness and some users praised the simplicity of the user interface (Bennati & Pournaras, 2018; Instant Gratification for Collective Awareness and Sustainable Consumerism, 2022; Klinglmayr et al., 2017; Pournaras et al., 2016).

More recently, (Kommenda et al., 2022) describes an interactive demo of Carbon Food Labels in the Financial Times, aimed at influence purchasing behavior by displaying Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) data directly on the products; for example - lentils (1kg CO₂e per 1 kg) v.s. beef (27kg CO₂e per 1 kg) - cleary illustrating the contrasting climate impact of different foods; moreover, shoppers could see the emissions in their shopping cart,enabling real-time comparisons and decision-making; an accompaying survey showed 68% of users were interested in choosing lower-emission products while a low 22% of the respondents trusted the data, highlighting a key challenge: standardizing and verifying supply-chain data.

The founder of the Commons (formerly known as Joro) consumer CO_2e tracking app recounts how people have a gut feeling about the 2000 calories one needs to eat daily, so perhaps daily CO_2e tracking could develop a gut feeling about one’s carbon footprint (Jason Jacobs, 2019). Zhang’s Personal Carbon Economy conceptualized the idea of carbon as a currency used for buying and selling goods and services, as well as an individual carbon exchange to trade one’s carbon permits (S. Zhang, 2018). These type of app suggest CO2e calculations will be part of our everyday experience. Nonetheless, sustaining user engagement over time in sustainability tracking apps is challenging, because the perceived personal benefit and measurable impact is so minimal - it may feel meaningless.​ Tracking sustainability may have collective benefits but tracking health has immediate personal benefits. Health apps feel tangible with increased well-being while sustainability apps often feel more collective, long-term and sometimes with benefits too small to matter, making it harder to motivate individual users.

Sustainability tracking, while perhaps less than health tracking, can also have a measurable impact. One study of personal carbon footprint tracking apps (aka CO2 calculators) in a mid-sized German city (n = 216) helped overall emission reduction by 23% correlating with feedback from the app specifically reducing emissions from heating 26.9%, food 16.4%, household 34.7% reduction, and mobility 12% (Hoffmann et al., 2024). Better maps can also convince people to make changes; advanced maps which visualize erosion, heat, flooding, fire, drought, extreme weather, and other climate risks, can inform resilience planning; a map for transport, such as taxis, can visualize pickup/dropoff imbalances, coloring areas green where pickups exceed dropoffs and orange where dropoffs exceed pickups, can help users see spatial patterns and inform climate-resilient transport planning (Carto, 2023).

Because of the large emission fooprint of transport, offering a steep emissions reduction potential, greener modes of mobility have been heavily researched. Already more than a decade ago, a survey from April 2014 to December 2015 (n = 4586, total 29930 travel episodes) across the United Kingdom, asked participants to rate their enjoyment (on a liker scale from 1 to 7) and tracked the type of travel (work, unpaid work, personal care, childcare, leisure, etc); resuls showed private car was used for 79% of personal care and 55% of leisure trips; key findings showed walking and cycling significantly increase enjoyment across all trip purposes, while public transit reduced enjoyment for childcare and work-related travel; overall findings show improvements in transport infrastructure can both lower green house gas emissions and boost traveler wellbeing (Echeverría et al., 2022).

A wide range of personal carbon footprint calculators have been released online, ranging from those made by governments and companies to student projects. Similar to personal health trackers, personal CO₂ trackers help one track emissions and suggests sustainable actions. In Singapore, the DBS bank released a consumer sustainability ESG app called DBS LiveBetter (DBS, 2018; DBS Singapore, n.d.)

A selection of personal sustainability apps.

App	Description
Commons (Formerly Joro)	Finacial Sustainability Tracking + Sustainable Actions
Klima	Offset Subscription
Wren	Offset Subscription
JouleBug	CO2 tracking
eevie
Aerial
EcoCRED
Carbn
LiveGreen
Earth Hero

(Shin et al., 2019)’s synthesis review of 463 studies shows wearable devices have potential to influence behavior change towards healthier lifestyles. While the behavior changes may sound simple - like switching from driving to walking - and would have and effect both on health and the environmental, they are hindered by factors from personal motivation to (lack of) suitable urban architecture. (Delclòs-Alió et al., 2022) discusses walking in Latin-American cities. Walking is the most sustainable method or transport but requires the availability of city infrastructure, such as sidewalks, which many cities still lack. The urban environment has an influence on health. (Sanchez et al., 2022) suggests tracking users using their smartphones and attributing points for actions deemed beneficial - yet this has potential privacy issues. For any service tracking the user’s action, following privacy UX guidelines is crucial (Jarovsky, 2022).

Human behavior is affected by the environment. The above chart shows the incidence of bad behavior during the pandemic increased significantly in Sweden based on data from (Ceccato et al., 2023).

Digital Product Passports: Towards Tracking Sustainability Superapps

Even though digital product passports relate heavily to adopting a circular economy, I’ve chosen to highlight this topic under Design, as it’s the main design implication from this chapter - an emerging technology which needs to be designed.

• “Digital product passports, part of the Sustainable Products Initiative, are one of the key actions take under the Circular Economy Action Plan (CEAP) of the European Union. The goal of this initiative is to lay the groundwork for a gradual introduction of a digital product passport in at least 3 key markets by 2024” (Kuch, 2022)

(King et al., 2023) proposes a universal definition of a Digital Product Passport Ecosystem (DPPE) as a “system-of-systems,” synthesizing stakeholder requirements and concerns from the EU’s open consultation on the Sustainable Products Initiative, aiming to influence consumer behavior towards sustainable purchasing - and responsible product ownership - by making the sustainability aspects of a product life cycle clearly apparent.

(Reich et al., 2023) identifies information gaps as one of the major obstacles to realizing a circular economy; a study of 28 experts across academia, industry, government, consultancy and NGOs, showed Digital Product Passports (DPPs) can enhance the 9 “R” in circular strategies. The first full articulation of the 9 R strategies came from the report “Circular Economy – Measuring Innovation in the Product Chain”, where (Potting et al., 2017) laid out a hierarchy of circular‐economy options; the framework was later adopted and popularized in peer-reviewed literature, for example (Kirchherr et al., 2017).

The 9 R strategies from [@potting2017circular].

R-Strategy	Definition
R9 Recover	Incineration of material (energy recovery)
R8 Recycle	Process materials, obtaining the same (high grade) or lower grade quality
R7 Repurpose	Use discarded product (or its parts) in a new product (with a different function)
R6 Remanufacture	Use parts of a discarded product in a new product (with the same function)
R5 Refurbish	Restore an old product (bring it up to date)
R4 Repair	Maintenance of a product so it can be used with its original function
R3 Reuse	Reuse by another consumer (still in good condition and fulfills its original function)
R2 Reduce	Increase efficiency in product manufacture (consume fewer natural resources and materials)
R1 Rethink	Use the product more intensively (sharing the product via online platforms, etc)
R0 Refuse	Don’t use product at all (or replace the function with a better alternative)

(Nissinen et al., 2022) calls for emissions data to be made available to manufacturers, retailers, and consumers so they can make low-carbon choices; moreover, metrics must move beyond a single aggregated number to assessing life-cycle emissions’ variability. One way to achieve this is called Digital Product Passports (DPP), a further development of the idea of carbon labels, capturing a comprehensive trace of data needed for green transformation.

There’s extensive literature on the use Digital Product Passports (DPP) at specific industries and for particular use cases, often focused on improved efficiencies. (Plociennik et al., 2022) details the use of Digital Product Passports and the cloud platform infrastructure to improve e-waste sorting when paired with ML-based object detection. (Berger, Rusch, et al., 2023) outlines data-science and machine-learning approaches (for example sharing models) to enable the exchange of sensitive EV-battery life-cycle data through Digital Product Passports, while preserving confidentiality, helping overcome stakeholder reluctance. (Jensen et al., 2023) study of mechatronics supply chains found DPPs “support decision-making throughout product life cycles in favor of a circular economy”; specifically:

1. usage and maintenance
2. identification
3. materials
4. guidelines
5. supply-chain and reverse logistics
6. environmental data
7. compliance

With the increasing electrification of transport, finding ways to deal with the batteries is a crucial area of research. (Berger, Baumgartner, Weinzerl, Bachler, Preston, et al., 2023) examined the stakeholers of electric vehicle (EV) battery value-chain and mapped their data requirements and current availabilities, laying groundwork to propose a Digital Battery Passport.(Berger, Baumgartner, Weinzerl, Bachler, & Schöggl, 2023) lists current challenges with EV batteries, providing empirical insights into difficulties with DPP adoption, including technical, organizational, and policy barriers; an interesting part of the research is the introduction go “Sustainable Product Management” (SPM) as a specific field of management in the context of circular economy.

They key barriers to adoption from (Berger, Baumgartner, Weinzerl, Bachler, & Schöggl, 2023) include:

Uncertainty of stakeholders Technological barriers Insufficient willingness to share information Lack of clear legal requirements and standards

Meanwhile the enablers include:

Clear legal requirements Relative advantages (reputation gains, access to new markets access, risk avoidance, marketing) Monetary incentives (such as payments for data) Intrinsic motivation (compatibility with the values)

Focusing on food production industries, a brief historical overview of previous efforts in this area may be helpful, to contextualize the discussion. CO_2e labeling initiatives represent an early attempt to communicate the environmental cost of each product. Using carbon labels to convey CO_2e emission of consumer products has been a topic of discussion for decades (Adam Corner, 2012). Academic literature has looked at minute details such as color and positioning of the label (Zhou et al., 2019). There’s some indication consumers are willing to pay a small premium for low-CO_2e products; all else being equal, consumers choose the option with a lower CO_2e number (Carlsson et al., 2022; Xu & Lin, 2022). (Cohen & Vandenbergh, 2012) argues labeling the carbon footprint of products does help inform consumer choice towards sustainability and help promote a green economy. A large-scale study of UK university students finds some evidence to suggest labeling low CO_2e food enables people to choose a climatarian diet, however the impact of carbon labels on the market share of low-carbon meals is negligible (Lohmann et al., 2022).

Similar to to Nutritional Facts Labeling, Carbon Labels provide basic information regarding the emissions’ profile of each product, yet taken alone, without a systemic push for carbon reduction, they are insufficient to drive significant behavioral change. A study in Sweden underlines a negative correlation between worrying about climate impact and interest in climate information on products (Edenbrandt & Lagerkvist, 2022). This latter finding may be interpreted to suggest a need for wider environmental education programs among consumers. (Asioli et al., 2022) found differences between countries, where Spanish and British consumers chose meat products with ‘no antibiotics ever’ over a Carbon Trust label, whereas French consumers chose CO₂ labeled meat products. Despite ongoing interest, several studies have shown that the overall impact of carbon labeling on consumer behavior remains negligible. The idea is yet to find mainstream adoption and participation in carbon labeling schemes remains voluntary, with only a limited number of companies implementing such practices, although their numbers are gradually increasing. Notable examples include the U.S.-based restaurant chain Just Salad , U.K.-based vegan meat-alternative Quorn, and plant milk Oatly, all of which provide carbon labeling on their products (Brian Kateman, 2020). (ClimatePartner, 2020) Companies like ClimatePartner and Carbon Calories offers labeling consumer goods with emission data as a service. (The Carbon Trust, n.d.) The Carbon Trust reports it’s certified 270000 product emissions’ footprints.

Companies with Carbon Labels [@briankatemanCarbonLabelsAre2020]

Company	Country
Just Salad	U.S.A.
Quorn	U.K.
Oatly	U.K.
IKEA	Sweden

Organization to Certify Carbon Labels [@climatepartnerLabellingCarbonFootprint2020].

Organization	Country	Number of Product Certified
ClimatePartner
Carbon Calories
Carbon Trust		27000

Transitioning from simpler carbon labels to data-driven Digital Product Passports requires comprehensive data collection on product’s history, composition, and environmental impact, digital infrastructure, industry collaboration, regulatory frameworks, and consumer engagement.

Digital Product Passport goals [@strettonDigitalProductPassports2022].

Goal	Description
Sustainable Product Production
Businesses to create value through Circular Business Models
Consumers to make more informed purchasing decisions
Verify compliance with legal obligations

(Van Capelleveen et al., 2023) conducted a comprehensive, structured review of 200 academic papers on Digital Product Passports and related concepts, including circular, product, material, resource, recycling, and cradle-to-cradle variants, assessing dimensions such as historical developments, stakeholders, goals, challenges, and designs for solutions, in order to formalize the concept and its boundaries, finally synthesizing a unified definition:

“a digital interface composing a certified identity of a single identifiable product by accessing the set of life cycle registrations linked to this object in order to yield insight into the sustainability and circularity characteristics, the circular value estimation, and the circular opportunities for both that product and its underlying components and materials.”

Circularise, a leader in providing digital product passports as a service, lists 15 types of data that should be include in a DPP (Tian Daphne & Chris Stretton, 2023). A case study of rigid polyurethane foam (PU foam), a lightweight insulation material, explains how Circularise used blockchain and zero-knowledge proof (ZKP) to allow for DPP data-sharing, while retaining privacy and control over the data (Daphne, 2022; León, 2025).

The above chart shows data categories used in Digital Product Passports (DPPs) as defined by Circularise.

Towards Sustainable Product Management

(Gnanasambandam et al., 2022) describes responsible product management as embedding privacy, sustainability, and inclusion into product design as core priorities, not afterthoughts. (Korzhova, 2020) works as a Sustainable Product Manager at Grover, an online platform which offers product for rent; she details how rentals-based business model has saved 360 tons of devices from going to waste (the author compares the amount to about 15 truckloads of devices), which sums up to 4275 tons of CO₂ savings.

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