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Conference addresses sustainable product design

A The Centre For Sustainable Design product story

Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team Sep 12, 2006

Sustainable Innovation 06 will be held at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, USA on 23rd and 24th October 2006.

Sustainable Innovation 06 - the 11th international conference that addresses how to make product design and services more sustainable in a world of long, complex supply chains and geographically dispersed organisations and teams - will be held at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, USA on 23rd and 24th October 2006.

Focusing on how best to address the global challenges, solutions and opportunities in this field, the conference includes over 40 leading-edge papers from a range of distinguished speakers from industry and academia.

For the first time, the conference will use a carbon credit system designed to offset CO2 emissions generated by the conference - for example, by travel to the venue.

The conference is organised by the renowned Centre for Sustainable Design at the University for the Creative Arts (UCCA) at Farnham, Surrey, UK, in association with Stuart Graduate School of Business and The centre for Sustainable Enterprise, which is also based at Illinois Institute of Technology.

Sustainable Innovation 06 is part of the "Towards sustainable product design" series of conferences.

Highlighting best practice and providing case studies of real examples, Sustainable Innovation 2006 includes invited and refereed papers covering sustainable product/service development and design from academics, consultants, product designers and design engineers, sustainability, environment and CSR managers and other business functions.

Martin Charter, Director of The Centre for Sustainable Design, says: "Design, assembly, manufacturing and consumption are now often geographically disparate within long and complex value chains".

"These changes are being driven by global corporations, China as an economic powerhouse and hugely significant manufacturer - and India as an emerging economic power".

"Globalisation on today's scale has dramatic implications for the creation and development of future products and services".

"There are also impacts on the environment, including resources and pollution, to consider - and the threats and opportunities to take into consideration".

"The conference will demonstrate what can be done to mitigate the negatives and exploit the opportunities".

"Sustainable innovation has a huge role to play in ensuring the world - including business - benefits from positive outcomes rather than suffer the consequences of inaction".

"For example, a major opportunity to accelerate sustainable innovation is emerging with the growing interest in South-East Asia, Europe and North America in the use of public procurement as a tool to drive improved environmental and social performance of product and services".

Sustainable Innovation 06 is supported by a high-level Advisory Board.

Significant sponsors, supporters and endorsers of the conference include: South-East England Development Agency (sponsor); United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) O2 Global Network Future 500 (supporter); Industrial Designers Society of America (endorser).