Design Trends: Sustainable Invention Design

Over the last few decades, society has become increasingly aware of the wide-reaching negative impacts of using unsustainable and single-use products. Most of the personal items and tools that we use on a daily basis are made with materials that have long biodegradation times or contain harmful chemicals and are improperly disposed of.

These products ultimately end up slowly deteriorating in landfills, where harmful substances ingrained in their fabrics will seep into the earth, the air, and our waterways, posing detrimental harm to the environment, wildlife, and our world, as we know it.

Developing sustainable inventions is a great strategy to help minimize our output of waste that takes years to biodegrade. The majority of the pollution produced today is a result of unsustainable products, production methods, and packaging that were developed without the environment in mind.

Finding alternatives for these products and they way they are packaged is how we can better and change our world.

Sustainability in design is not only great for the environment but also a great way to appeal to consumers. Most people have reached the understanding that it is important to consume products that will help heal the environment rather than damage it further.

As such, you are not only creating a great product that can help people but also a product that allows them to take part in improving the environment. Below are a few ways you can tackle sustainable invention design to develop a product that is eco-friendly and encourages healthier consumption habits.

Compostable and Biodegradable Products

Sustainable inventions that are compostable are essentially products made of plant-based materials designed to disintegrate easily. When discarded in a composting environment, the product undergoes the full decomposition process to successfully support plant life and enrich the soil.

While composting can be done just about anywhere, it is best to follow the appropriate disposal measures when throwing out a compostable product. Even if improperly thrown out, one of the biggest advantages of this type of product is that it will still disintegrate naturally.

In this case, a few pieces may take longer to fully decompose. Nonetheless, the majority of a product breaking down and being absorbed by the earth is better than being left entirely to waste.

A biodegradable product is made with certain materials that microbes within the environment can seamlessly break down and use as a food source.

Biodegradation can take place in different environments, such as soils, marine environments, and compost sites. The environment essentially converts carbon from the product and turns it into energy in order to maintain wildlife.

Edible Bowls and Plates

One of the most widely used products that has substantially added to our pollution problem for years is single-use plates and tableware. With the summer season here, more people are bound to spend their days outdoors having picnics or barbeques, which means more plastic plates and cutlery are likely to be used.

A way that innovators have tackled this dilemma is by crafting inventive product designs for sustainable inventions that are eco-friendly and biodegradable products while maintaining a high level of functionality. This ensures that no matter where it is thrown out, it will still degrade quickly and not pose a risk to the environment as it does.

Biotrem – an esteemed company that came up with the brilliant idea to make edible bowls and plates – is a fantastic example. Their plates are made from wheat bran, which means after you’re finished using your plate, you can finish your meal off by eating the plate as well! Don’t worry – if you’re too full, you can rest assured that it will degrade within 30 days of being thrown out.

Compostable Shoes

Another major contributor to pollution worldwide is the fashion industry. Thousands of clothing and garments are burned every year, often after being used only a handful of times, and the recent rise of fast fashion has heightened the amount of waste. A high volume of clothing is created at a rapid rate to meet the swiftly shifting fashion trends and then discarded just as quickly.

Shoes are a particularly notorious culprit of fashion waste primarily since they are made entirely of or contain plastics, which take a long time to degrade. Thankfully, a few modern designers have stepped up to the plate by creating sustainable shoe inventions.

Innovators at WAES Footwear have been looking for a solution to this problem, and they’ve finally cracked the code by using natural materials to create a fully compostable, biodegradable shoe. The shoe features an organic canvas upper that is bound to a leather upper using conifer glue and twine made from hemp, cotton, and flax. The insole and outsole are made of tree sap!

WAES’ sustainable shoes show how most designs can be innovated on to create products that are equally as functional while posing less harm to our environment.

Shoes that end up in landfills are almost never recycled and can cause a lot of long-term damage to the environment. However, with an increasing amount of effort being put into making sustainable products, there is hope!

If you have a new invention idea and you’d like to learn more about this process, get in touch with MAKO today and visit our website to find out more. Or feel free to give us a call at 1-888-806-MAKO, and we can set you up on a call with our product strategist!

About: MAKO Design + Invent is the original firm providing world-class consumer product development services tailored to startups, small manufacturers, and inventors. Simply put, we are the leading one-stop-shop for developing your physical product from idea to store shelves, all in a high-quality, cost-effective, and timely manner. We operate as one powerhouse 30-person product design team spread across 4 offices to serve you (Austin, Miami, San Francisco, & Toronto). We have full-stack in-house industrial design, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, patent referral, prototyping, and manufacturing services. To assist our startup and inventor clients, in addition to above, we help with business strategy, product strategy, marketing, and sales/distribution for all consumer product categories. Also, our founder Kevin Mako hosts The Product Startup Podcast, the industry's leading hardware podcast. Check it out for tips, interviews, and best practices for hardware startups, inventors, and product developers. Click HERE to learn more about MAKO Design + Invent!