Interview with Asheen Phansey, product sustainability Manager

Sustainable, eco, eco, 'eco-friendly', green, natural are devaluing by overuse. There are a couple of definitions of sustainability that I prefer. According to the Brundtland Commission, of the 1983: "Living sustainably means living and acting in a way not limiting the possibilities of live and act to future generations". Another definition, given by the community biomimicry (which studies the ways of imitating life, nature) is simple: "life creates conditions conducive to life". If we do not in addition to the possibilities of the Earth to sustain life, but destroys them, you delete them, we must change our practices to be, at least, neutral, and ideally restorers.

In regards to SolidWorks, it's sustainable design, sustainable product design, or design sustainable products: products that do what is expected of them, but with a less than other comparable environmental impact.

There is a certain social, economic, governmental trend toward sustainability. Not necessarily among engineers. We have tried to move them this trend. We believe that the design will become sustainable design. We have dedicated time and looked for suitable partners to develop a product for simple use. We will now look for the pioneering users, create awareness, educate companies and users how they will benefit.

Raw create a cycle: we released things of the Earth and return to bury them. But if we do so that they can never again to take advantage, reducing the capacity. This is happening with some metals exotic as tantalum, or in more common materials such as copper. Energy is not exactly equal, because higher prices make some farms that were not profitable, and this limits the rate of ascent.

This will help to create awareness on sustainability. In three areas: try to eliminate designs the materials that are very difficult to achieve; limit its use; reduce energy use both in production and the life.

The tool measures the amount of energy used during production and its environmental impact. This allows to different alternatives, choosing which has a lower energy or environmental impact. It also allows the introduction of how much energy will be used during the service life. Then, you can see what the impact of each element: materials, manufacturing, transportation, use and waste management. A company that uses our product, Ruud Lighting, discovered that, for their products, the really major impact occurs during use: the kWh consumed. And they focused their efforts on energy efficiency. The tool says that a 1% improvement in energy efficiency is more significant than a reduction of 50% in materials. Helps you to focus, to discover where is the biggest impact and will suggest ways to reduce it.

The product database has information of recycled products. With regard to the product as waste management, a mere geographical consideration is using currently. For example, to know what percentage of materials recycled, incinerated or poured into the USA. For the moment, we do not know how a product is going to assemble and disassemble. SolidWorks, for the time being, does not know of adhesives, or of some modes of Assembly. It is difficult to know what is recyclable or what is going to end up happening with a product.

Something is in what they had not even thought. It is an idea interesting... perhaps consider the number of materials of the product.

One of them is the analysis of transport costs. He is sometimes preferred to do something else nearby, why will lead to less transport. But perhaps this transport is by road, instead of by sea, which is more efficient and has less impact.

The second is the tool to 'search for a similar material,' which selects are the engineering parameters you wish to keep (density, stiffness, tension of rupture,...) and search the database of materials to search for alternatives that meet the specified requirements. And you can see the impact of each one.

I believe that one of them is the tool to view sets. It is not exclusive of the sustainability section. Allows you to colorize different parts depending on the criteria you want. One of them may be the 'carbon footprint'. And this allows to quickly view what has more impact, and prioritize their optimization. Or select all the pieces of a material, which can be replaced by another of lesser impact, in a single step.

We were surprised on several occasions: in USA there has been an adoption faster than in Europe, probably by the fact that there is already more stringent environmental regulations. In Asia it has been very successful, especially in Korea.