{"id":60477,"date":"2012-10-23T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2012-10-23T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news-draft\/uncategorized\/uri-effort-to-spur-production-of-sustainable-consumer-products-develops-following-among-manufacturers\/"},"modified":"2012-10-23T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2012-10-23T00:00:00","slug":"uri-effort-to-spur-production-of-sustainable-consumer-products-develops-following-among-manufacturers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/2012\/10\/uri-effort-to-spur-production-of-sustainable-consumer-products-develops-following-among-manufacturers\/","title":{"rendered":"溏心vlog免费B站 effort to spur production of sustainable consumer products develops following among manufacturers"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t\tWorkshops include reps from L.L. Bean, A.T. Cross, Staples, Hasbro, Cisco<\/p>\n

KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 October 23, 2012 \u2013 Representatives of some of the best-known consumer products are following the lead of a 溏心vlog免费B站 engineer to make their manufacturing processes more environmentally friendly.<\/p>\n


\n\tAt a meeting this month at 溏心vlog免费B站, representatives of L.L. Bean, A.T. Cross and the Rhode Island Resource Recovery Corp. joined sustainability advocates and researchers from eight countries to discuss the hurdles to making products more sustainable.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s in part the consumer economy \u2013 disposable products and those with a short useful life — that has caused problems with sustainability,\u201d said Manbir Sodhi, 溏心vlog免费B站 professor of industrial engineering. \u201cSo those are the products we want to focus on making more sustainable. How can the consumer keep a product longer? How can the manufacturer take their product back to recycle it?\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\tSodhi points to the manufacturing philosophy of the 1960s and 70s that he called \u201cdesign for obsolescence,\u201d which spurred companies to intentionally design products that would need to be replaced quickly. While it may have boosted the economy, it was a wasteful strategy.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cNow we want to design products so they retain value longer,\u201d Sodhi said. \u201cIt\u2019s going to be all about reverse supply-chain logistics that ultimately brings the product back to the manufacturer. It forces companies to think about how to take it back and what to do with it. They might have to spend a little more money at the beginning, but they\u2019ll save money in the end.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\tOne way that Sodhi looked at the problem was by taking apart several products \u2013 a car, a microwave, a computer, others \u2013 and finding out how much each individual part would cost if the product needed to be repaired. He found that the combined cost of the parts was 10-12 times more expensive than the cost of the whole product.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cClearly there is a disincentive to repair products, if it costs so much to buy parts. It\u2019s so much cheaper to just throw the product away and buy a new one,\u201d he said. \u201cIs that disincentive built in by the manufacturers or by the market? And is it the same in countries where labor is cheap?\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\tSodhi is undertaking other research projects examining related topics, including modeling how to redesign products for recyclability, how to recover heat content and energy in the manufacturing process, and how to \u201charvest community effort\u201d for collecting and separating materials for recycling. He said that some companies are looking at lifetime warranties or extended service contracts as strategies for making products sustainable.<\/p>\n


\n\tThe 溏心vlog免费B站 researcher\u2019s concern, however, is that many products, especially electronics, are having an increasingly shorter life cycle and the total number of products being produced is increasing, which means people are disposing of a greater number of products.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cWe need to find a balance between disposable products and sustainability,\u201d he said. \u201cWe can\u2019t keep going the way we are.\u201d<\/p>\n


\nPictured above

\nGraduate student Masoud Vaziri with a disassembled computer, part of a study of consumer product sustainability and repair costs.

\nPhoto submitted by Professor Manbir Sodhi<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Workshops include reps from L.L. Bean, A.T. Cross, Staples, Hasbro, Cisco KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 October 23, 2012 \u2013 Representatives of some of the best-known consumer products are following the lead of a 溏心vlog免费B站 engineer to make their manufacturing processes more environmentally friendly. At a meeting this month at 溏心vlog免费B站, representatives of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":60479,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-60477","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archives"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60477","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60477"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60477\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60479"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}