Conference Agenda

Sustainability is becoming a fundamental consideration in engineering and product design, requiring approaches that minimise environmental impact. Environmental profiling offers a structured method for evaluating site-specific biomarkers to support data-driven, non-intrusive design interventions. The aim of this paper is to examine the role of environmental profiling in sustainable design and to propose a structured framework for co-designing with nature. Insights from case studies present the effects of integrating remote sensing into design interventions in conjunction with the dissemination of the created environmental profile and captured data through design and visualisation tools. Implications of applying the suggested workflow in various educational contexts, modes and curricula for fostering sustainability-driven design thinking are also provided.

The ‘Ten Golden Rules’ for promoting sustainability in product development offer a simple and practical method for integrating ecological principles into the development process. This method has proven particularly successful in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and small development teams, as it provides easy-to-understand and cost-effective guidelines that can be implemented without extensive resources. In essence, the ‘Ten Golden Rules’ aim to minimise material consumption, avoid environmentally harmful substances, promote product longevity and improve reusability and recyclability.

In this contribution, an approach is developed to take up the perspective of the Ten Golden Rules and expand on them. In order to be able to use it as an up-to-date holistic project alignment tool. A central aspect of the further development of the method is the greater consideration of social sustainability. This extension ensures that not only ecological, but also ethical and social aspects of the value chain come into focus. This includes fair working conditions and transparency in the supply chain. The promotion of modularity and reparability is also increasingly seen as an important step forward in extending the service life of products and minimising waste.

This paper presents the Circular Economies in Design Workshops project, an initiative focused on transforming plastic waste into educational resources to advance sustainability within the university and help align with broader EU sustainability goals. Through hands-on processes like desktop injection moulding, students repurpose plastic waste into tools and components for educational purposes whilst also promoting sustainable practices in design workshops. The paper will discuss the project’s objectives, methods, and student involvement and consider the broader implications for sustainability, education and student-championed institutional change.

Ireland ranks among the EU’s highest offenders for unrecycled plastic waste. Of the 53.1 million tons of plastic waste produced, only 38% is estimated to be recycled (Eurostat, 2022). Within the university, workshops for design and engineering activities currently lack facilities for recycling waste plastic. This, combined with constrained budgets and the rising cost of materials, creates significant challenges to student engagement and the adoption of sustainable practices.

The Circular Economies in Design Workshops project aims to reduce the waste generated from plastic-based activities in the workshops by repurposing the waste stream to create project components and educational tools, benefiting students and staff.

The project employs active, experiential learning to instil industry-relevant recycling skills in students and staff. It seeks to actively engage students in waste management in these spaces by transforming plastic waste into a usable material stream, fostering a culture of environmental responsibility within the university. This project also seeks to provide students with a practical understanding of how plastic can be repurposed within their projects. This will be achieved through manufacturing methods such as Injection moulding and FDM (Fused Deposition Modelling) 3D Printing whilst also learning the practical requirements of part design for injection moulding and mould tool design.

This approach is expected to reduce plastic waste by 50% within workshop environments, promoting a shift in student attitudes towards recycling and resource management. In the near future, other modules and courses will likely participate and help reach our TU-Dublin sustainability goals. Participation from external organisations is also expected. This project will act as a pillar to support the foundational work of two projects within organisations external to the university.

The project aims to inspire other universities and organisations to adopt similar practices by aligning with EU sustainability targets, setting a precedent for integrating circular economy models into educational spaces. The design workshops represent only a portion of the university’s overall waste plastic output, underscoring the potential for broader implementation across a wider range of lab and workshop facilities and a greater potential to improve the waste profile of the institution.

The purpose of this paper is 1) to demonstrate how knowledge transfer between academia and industry takes place in a collaborative and workshop-based process and 2) to discuss how that process contributes to industrial operationalization of research-based knowledge. This research is conducted within Project Y (2023-2026), which focuses on development and testing of recycled textiles made of feedstock from post-consumer textile waste. This paper is centred on the development of a material-driven design model for clothing and textiles. In Project Y 13 partners from academia and industry within textile recycling, weaving and knitting manufacturing as well as fashion, workwear and interior design experiment with material driven design to investigate, evaluate and eventually put recycled materials into use. In the period October 2023 to October 2024, six workshops were executed. Each workshop led to a new variation of the material driven design model, aiming to develop a material-driven design process that is operational in the industrial processes of apparel and textiles. The workshops were all based on co-creation between academic and industrial partners, all representing a variety of different fields within their professions. We finalize the paper discussing the benefits of co-creation between academia and industry and how it leads to mutual understanding and open spaces of opportunity.

Prototyping is fundamental to the design process, whether as a highly exploratory process in concept generation, as a communication tool with stakeholders and team members, or to refine a final concept. However, educators still perpetuate the use of permanent materials to make temporary artefacts. To understand this contradiction, reveal prototyping impact and student’s perception of their process, a study was conducted across two undergraduate industrial design courses at Syracuse University which centred on circular economy and fast-track life cycle assessment implementation. In the first course, students produced ‘looks like’ prototypes of redesigned electronics for the circular economy. They were encouraged, not required, to use materials that could enter the recycling stream and to document their material flows: what was embodied in the prototype and what was wasted. A self-reflection on their prototyping process and impact on course content of their future practice was captured. In the second course, students produced groups of three replica prototypes differing only in material (e.g. cardboard, Bristol paper, foamboard) or production techniques (e.g. 3DP, CNC) for life cycle assessment (LCA).

Results indicated that providing students with knowledge on the environmental impacts of common prototyping material gave them more data to choose when materials should be used in their process, or whether they should be avoided entirely. This work adds to the growing literature on the need to both formally and informally teach design and engineering students to think critically about their own process and contribution to our collective impact as an industry.