This a great video that explains why designing products to be made overseas isn't the best idea in the long run.

It leaves us with a big question: What can we do?

On one side, we want the best products at the best price (sadly, those are made in Asia today), on the other side, we want jobs for the largest amount of people (sadly, those jobs are paying less and less people more and more money).

Our capitalist goals aren't aligned...

Great work by Victor Hertz using common logos to share a piece of his mind about what they really mean.

I wonder if this company bashing trend through logos is going to get any bigger? I could imagine designing products that could have the same message strength...

Then again, it's not the product that's the problem, it's the system...

Pour créer une demande de la part des consommateurs, rien de mieux que d'aller chercher l'information correctement et la mettre sur ses produits. Il faut partir la roue. Cascades a commencé avec leurs résultats d'ACV. Mais le Québec est encore 3-4 ans en retard.

Ce que je note de l'initiative: Pas d'uniformité! Ni dans la forme ni dans le fond.

Une seule directive d'avoir un affichage multi-critères. On ne peut donc parler uniquement d'énergie, ou uniquement de CO2. Il faut parler de plusieurs impacts comme consommation d'eau, biodiversité, santé humaine. Et encore, il y en a qui parle de recyclage.

35+ exemples d'affichage environnemental.
http://www.developpement-durable.gouv.fr/IMG/pdf/fiches_completes.pdf

This is close to regenerative design. Instead of cleaning the earth to answer to your needs (think North pacific plastics gyre becomes a vaccum from the sea and Method soap bottles), now comes something different.

How can we use nature's energy creation capabilities to answer our needs? Let go of foreign oil or even 'local' hydroelectricity. Find autonomous, renewable sources of energy by tapping into systems already at work. This bioluminescent lamp is a concept in that direction.

For posts on the kitchen powered by poo, an urban beehive, and a paternoster that turns plastic containers into edible mushrooms, go, respectively,
http://www.fastcodesign.com/1665323/philipss-new-kitchen-concept-gathers-ener...
http://www.fastcodesign.com/1665353/and-why-shouldnt-you-have-a-swank-gadget-...
http://www.fastcodesign.com/1665391/can-you-really-create-a-gadget-that-turns...

Remember the idea of regenerative design. Electrolux getting most of the initial idea marketing behind this idea of cleaning up the sea. How plastic from the north pacific gyro could be used to make actual vaccum cleaners. It was just a concept campaign back then.
http://www.electrolux.se/Innovation/Campaigns/Vac-from-the-sea/

But now this seems closer to reality. Method has jumped on the idea and decided to make more than a brand image project out of this idea. An actual revenue making product. Image that when competitors are paying for petroleum products, Method is paying for washing the sea... Isn't that a better way to do business!

Nous assistons à la première pierre qui construira notre culture collective de l'analyse de cycle de vie.

Finalement, une entreprise publie les résultats d'une étude complète. Qui de mieux que Cascades pour le faire avec l'énorme crédibilité qu'elle a déjà. C'est vraiment un premier pas vers la compétition basée sur la performance environnementale. Finalement, on en est rendu là. À se battre pour une innovation plus responsable en même temps qu'une innovation dans la fonction.

Le couple économie/environnement pourra, grâce à l'analyse de cycle de vie, comparer des pommes et des pommes selon les forces du marchés.

Ce n'est qu'un début. N'oublions pas qu'en Europe, on a déjà quelques années d'avance. Vous savez c'est quoi le message provenant de l'utilisation des ACV là-bas? Écrivez moi à alexandre(point)joyce@idp-ipd(point)com et je vous ferai rire!

This is an interesting business model attached to a half complete product. Wimm is going to sell a little box, and someone else is going to find a market and a need for it. This is more than open innovation, it's open ended. And it runs on open sourced software.

This reminds me of buying clockworks. Dress it up anyway you like to tell the time. Just make sure to buy our little black clock box.

It also reminds me of the article written on the creation myth by Malcolm Gladwell. How the folks at Xerox had started developping the personal computer but they didn't have the market nor ambition to sell it (like it's hot) the way Stevie J did with apple. So instead of finishing the product design with the appropriate marketing analysis, just see if the product has some traction for another company or DIY community.

All this being said, could there be an environmental reasoning behind all this? Could this half-baked product, and business model have a environmental adavantage?

A good understanding of where their tool fits into the global picture. The two phases of assesment and redesign are well put, yet intergration between both is a little weak. The software doesn't really give that bird's eye view of the big picture, because that's not its focus. It's focus is much more on the shape of the object and not its function and purpose. So in the end, is this add-on good? Yes. It will help create awareness. But there are other tools much better placed to help really change the design. Not just the materials.