• Energy Research

Design for Sustainability is not the panacea we hoped it would be when it was first introduced in the latter part of the 20th century. Today, the health of both our environment and our societies is at a critical state, a breaking point, with piecemeal solutions offered as social-media-friendly rallying points, such as the European Parliament approved ban on single-use plastics, whilst fundamental, and arguably less ‘exciting’, issues such as loss of biodiversity, overpopulation, and climate change are shuffled to the back. It can be argued, however, that the awareness of the concept of sustainability and the need to reduce the negative human impact upon the environment and society has grown significantly and, consequently, has moved up the global agenda; this is evidenced by the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference. However, it is also clear that the role of Design for Sustainability within this agenda is not providing the solutions necessary to manifest the level of change required. Traditional approaches are not working. This Special Issue of Sustainability seeks to readdress this with eight papers that push the frontier of what Design for Sustainability could be—and possibly must be—across the broad spectrum of design disciplines.

The growth of eating lunch purchased out of the home has led to an increased need for pre-packaged food-to-go products. Single-use plastic packaging is frequently chosen for its food safety and convenience attributes; however, the material format is under scrutiny due to concerns over economic waste and environmental impact. A circular economy could transform linear make-use-dispose supply chains into circular systems, ensuring the cycling of valuable plastic resources. However, there has been limited research into how consumers will behave within circular economic systems. Understanding consumer behaviour with packaging disposed out of the home could aid designers in developing solutions society will adopt in the transition to a circular economy. This study evaluates the application of behaviour research methods, and the behavioural insight outputs, with stakeholders from the UK food-to-go packaging supply chain. A novel co-design workshop and business origami technique allowed multiple stakeholder groups to collaboratively discuss, evaluate, and plan how consumer behaviour techniques could be used within their supply chain packaging development process. Although all stakeholders identified strengths in incorporating behaviour studies into the development process, providing essential knowledge feedback loops, barriers to their application include the cost and time to implement, plus the existing inconsistent UK waste infrastructure.

Design for Sustainable Behaviour (DfSB) is a maturing research area concerned with the application of design strategies to influence consumer behaviour during a products use phase towards more sustainable action. However, current DfSB research has focussed on strategy selection with little research into understanding the real-world impact of the behaviour changing interventions debated. This article presents the results of an extensive literature review of one specific DfSB strategy, feedback – a user agentive performance indicator. These findings exemplify the considerations and limitations of this particular approach to behaviour change, drawing on empirical research conducted by a breadth of authors, including two of the only medium-term case studies in the field of DfSB. Considerations discussed include the frequency, duration and accuracy of feedback; the selection of metrics and the presentation medium and mode; the use of ambience and the location of the installation. Limitations of feedback includ...