Enabling design for environmental good – sub report – cross-cutting levers

Enabling Design for Environmental Good’ is a project that deploys insights and approaches from design, innovation, and sustainability to propose a suite of actions to improve the design and specification of products, materials, and processes in the Australian context. The Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water (previously The Department of Agriculture, Water, and the Environment) commissioned an RMIT-led consortium, with Arcadis and One Planet Consulting, to run the ‘Enabling Design for Environmental Good’ Project (the Project). This report is an extract from the original, focusing specifically on the cross-cutting levers that enable Eco-Design. There are various ‘cross-cutting’ influences on design practice when it is aimed at environmentally preferable outcomes. Cross-cutting influences are those that are relevant widely across different design disciplines and industry sectors. This project was framed around broad levers to engage Australian industry, rather than sector-defined initiatives. This allowed for cross-cutting themes to emerge through the research and resulted in a holistic approach for examining what could assist in enabling design for environmental good.