GCSE Design & Technology: Ecological, Social and Economic Issues in Design Revision Guide

The 6 Rs

The 6 Rs provide a framework designers use to reduce the environmental impact of products across their life cycle: Reduce means using fewer materials, less energy or less packaging in the design and manufacture of a product; Refuse means choosing not to use materials, processes or products that are known to be harmful to the environment; Reuse means using a product or component again, either for its original purpose or a new one, without needing to reprocess it; Repair means fixing a broken product so that it can continue to be used rather than being thrown away; Recycle means breaking a product down so that its materials can be reprocessed into new products; and Rethink means reconsidering the whole approach to a design problem to find a genuinely more sustainable solution, rather than simply making small adjustments to an existing product.

Sustainability

Sustainability means meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. In design, this involves considering the whole life cycle of a product — from extracting and processing raw materials, through manufacture, use and eventual disposal or recycling — and trying to minimise negative environmental impacts, such as resource depletion, pollution and carbon emissions, at every stage. A product's carbon footprint is the total amount of greenhouse gases produced directly or indirectly through its life cycle, and designers can reduce this by choosing lower-impact materials, more efficient manufacturing processes, and by sourcing materials more locally to cut down on transport emissions.

Ethical design and manufacture

Ethical design and manufacture means considering the wellbeing of the people involved in making a product, as well as its impact on society more broadly. This includes ensuring safe working conditions, fair wages and reasonable working hours for workers, often in factories overseas, as well as considering social factors such as accessibility, so that products can be used comfortably and safely by people with different needs and abilities, including disabled users. Designers and manufacturers who ignore these issues in pursuit of the lowest possible cost can cause real harm to workers and communities.

Fair trade

Fair trade is a movement and certification scheme that aims to ensure producers and workers, particularly in developing countries, receive a fair price for their goods and labour, along with decent working conditions. Products carrying a fair trade mark, such as some cotton, cocoa and coffee, guarantee that a larger share of the price paid by the consumer reaches the original producers, helping to support sustainable livelihoods rather than allowing profits to be concentrated elsewhere in the supply chain.

Planned obsolescence

Planned obsolescence is the practice of deliberately designing a product with a limited useful life, or making it difficult or expensive to repair or upgrade, so that consumers are encouraged to replace it sooner than would otherwise be necessary. While this can benefit manufacturers by increasing repeat sales, it has significant ecological drawbacks, since it increases the consumption of raw materials and energy and generates more waste, and it can also be seen as an unfair or unethical practice towards consumers.

Common mistakes

• Listing the 6 Rs in the wrong order or muddling their meanings, especially confusing Reduce (using less) with Reuse (using again) and Recycle (reprocessing materials).
• Describing sustainability only in terms of recycling, when it actually covers the whole life cycle of a product, including material sourcing, manufacture, use and disposal.
• Assuming planned obsolescence is always a manufacturing fault, when it is in fact usually a deliberate design decision made to increase future sales.