Sustainable Product Design: Now is the time...

You may have seen the video on the news of the Maldives Government holding a meeting six metres under water. The reason they did this was to show what would happen to the Maldives should sea levels continue to rise.

We all need to be doing whatever we can to reduce carbon emissions. As Designers and Engineers, we have a much greater impact on this than many of us are probably aware. A small change at the Design stage can have a huge impact across the full life of a product. Its recyclability, how much energy it uses throughout its life and just the transportation of the product all need to be considered.

SustainabilityXpress is a great way to do this and all SolidWorks subscription customer have access to this in SolidWorks 2010. However, just like all  of the Xpress tools in SolidWorks, there is also a full product. The full version allows full life cycle analysis of full assemblies, where the Xpress version is limited to parts. Give us a call to find out more about the full version of SolidWorks Sustainability.

Why not be one of the first companies to make a difference? We will all have to be considering the long term effects of our designs and products lives on the environment sooner or later. This may be a change in the law or driven by consumers. Walmart in the US, already require all their suppliers to do a green assessment on all their products.