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Sustainable development requires innovation towards radically
dematerialized products, infrastructures and systems, as well as the change
of consumption habits.
Increasing
ressource productivity
When striving for improvements in resource productivity in terms of MIPS
(the Material Input per Service-Unit), either lowering MI for a given
S, or increasing S with a given quantity of resources can be applied.
Both requires technological as well as managerial personal adjustments
and innovations.
Eco-intelligent Products can be defined
as competitively priced services and products (objects, tools, machines,
buildings and infrastructures) that yield maximum possible utility -
in terms of individual customers preferences - for the longest possible
time, with a minimum of natural material, energy, surface coverage and
dispersion of toxic materials - from cradle to grave.
This means that from a resource conserving point of view, designing eco-intelligent
products, services or infrastructures requires to extract from each investment
of natural materials the largest possible number of service units for
the longest possible time span.
Project Areas
ECO-INFO-SOCIETY
Ecological Information Society (EIS)
Sustainable
development calls for an important reduction of the absolute use of ressources.
One possible strategy to achieve this, is to use the potentials of the
information society in combination with the right macroeconomic tools
and challenging changes in lifestyles.
more...
Product Service Systems (PSS)
SERI is currently participating in two projects dealing
with Innovations by shifting to Product Service Systems.
more...
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Want to learn more?
Long
text version of the theme-description Production
[ pdf].
SERIs flyer
on Production
[ pdf 146
kB].
SERIs flyer
on Production in german [
pdf 148 kB].
Service
Project-Overview
Publications
Links
Contact
Roman
Mesicek
Five Rules for eco-intelligent products
- The number of service units obtainable from
products ("service delivery machines") must be as high as
possible during their entire useful life. Built-in obsolescence must
stop.
- The life-long material input into processes,
products, and services must be as low as possible.
- The life-long energy inputs into processes,
products, and services must be as low as possible.
- The land use (surface coverage) per unit service
must be as low as possible, from cradle to grave.
- The dispersion of toxics must be minimal.
Source: Friedrich
Schmidt-Bleek. Das MIPS-Konzept.
Munich: Droemer-Knaur 1998
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