Assessment of information adequacy of testing products for

sustainability
Ramani Krishnaswamy, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India,
ramani@cpdm.iisc.ernet.in
Monto Mani, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India, monto@astra.iisc.ernet.in
Abstract. Sustainability emanates from the perceived risk of damaging the life-support potential
of the environment due to the impacts of human actions on the natural resources and
processes. In this paper, the authors limit the scope to environmental sustainability
considerations. Earth scale models, with a limited set of variables and simplifying assumptions,
exist to forecast the scenarios. Some of them point to unfamiliar environmental changes and
others speculate undesirable scenarios. There are no definite thresholds estimated yet that, if
breached, will endanger humankind's survival. Models at subsystem levels are fraught with the
boundary uncertainty issue. Design for Sustainability as a concept promotes principles that
address concerns arising out of sustainable development. From engineering design perspective,
there are no definitive test cases at the earth scale except model-based forecasts of scenarios
with major assumptions. In a systems sense humans and products are components within the
earth system. Difficulty in defining boundary between components, products in this case, result
in lack of references for devising test cases to validate sustainability requirements.
Many articles in the literature qualify incremental improvements in product performance as
equivalent to partially meeting sustainability requirements. The product-environment coupling is
inseparable while designing test cases for sustainability requirements. The authors argue that
qualifying products as sustainable based on incremental performance improvement is arbitrary.
Performance improvement at product level without reference to the state of the environment is
insufficient validation of sustainability requirements. A simplified illustration highlights the
information elements in a simple scenario of resource-consumption-regeneration balance.
There is a need to examine the information content of product sustainability claims in the
absence of references derived from the system level thresholds. There is scope to extend the
argument to a framework for information adequacy for sustainability assessment of components
of a system.

Proceedings of the International Symposium on Sustainable Systems and Technologies (ISSN 2329-9169) is
published annually by the Sustainable Conoscente Network. Jun-Ki Choi and Annick Anctil, co-editors 2015.
ISSSTNetwork@gmail.com.
Copyright 2015 by Ramani Krishnaswamy, Monto Mani Licensed under CC-BY 3.0.
Cite as:
Assessment of information adequacy of testing products for sustainability, Proc. ISSST, Ramani
Krishnaswamy, Monto Mani. Doi information v3 (2015)

Assessment of information adequacy of testing products for sustainability

Introduction. The basis for sustainability is the anthropocentric formulation of the concept of
sustainable development (Brundtland, 1987), derived from the general principles of feedback
systems involving consumption of resources in the socio-ecological setting. In terms of
sustainable development, the entity of preservation/ perpetuation is primarily humans. Longterm scenarios of select variables of development at earth scale point to current anthropogenic
processes leading to undesirable states (Meadows et al. 2004). In this paper, the authors limit
the scope to environmental sustainability considerations with regard to designing products for
sustainability. Design generates solutions to turn an undesirable state to a desirable state by
positive action. From a design perspective, at the earth level, system requirement is the eternal
accessibility of resources for supporting human lives with an adaptive regulation of processes in
the fully connected, dynamically transforming constituents of the system. Sustainability implies a
system perspective and in turn entails environment-product formulation of problem and solution.
There is a gray area in the sustainability literature pertaining to design of products for meeting
sustainability requirements. As of now, there are no specifications for the whole system
sustainable. However, there are only some principles, if applied in totality, may counter the
undesirable trends in certain key state variables. There is a tendency to attribute sustainability
to a product based on a limited interpretation of the concept. Understanding a product that
performs in a system of natural processes with numerous linked entities and processes is the
specific motivation of this research. This research dwells on the question of the prerequisites for
testing products for sustainability. All arguments are presented with engineering design as
reference domain.
Design for Sustainability Research context. Anthropogenic processes, particularly
manufacturing, create entities, called products in this work, that create more processes and
interact with the environmental processes in complex ways. To be confident a priori of the effect
of the products on the environment, comprehensive knowledge of the cause-effect chains of
these combinatorially explosive number of interactions on the accessibility of resources for
human well-being is essential.
There is no universal definition of 'sustainable product'. The widely prevalent discourse equates
sustainability to improvement of performance(s). e.g. higher energy efficiency, lower emissions,
etc. These are measures of comparison between products but have no discernible implications
or traceability to system sustainability performance. Sustainability as an endeavor of directionto-target is criticized (Pope et al. 2004) for lack of clarity in its definition in terms of expected
(systemic) outcome. One definition considers that a sustainable product is more sustainable
than the previous ones (Gmelin et al. 2014) Similar connotations are widespread in the design
for sustainability discourses. Comparison with functionally related products is proposed as
environmentally conscious design in (Telenko et al. 2010). In (Buchert et al. 2014) a collection of
fifty tools and methods are organized to enable engineers to define sustainability milestones in
product development from improvement perspective. However, these milestones may be
arbitrary depending on the scope of application of the methods and normative priorities. In a
critical review of a select set of approaches to design for sustainability (Gaziulusoy, 2014)
reveals that none of them meet the criteria for addressing system level changes. Short-term
incremental approaches, a la weak sustainability, do not correlate with the system behavior.
There is recognition that bottom-up strategies are short of scientific basis for informing about the
larger picture. There is a need to expand inquiry into understanding the linkages between the
whole and the parts in the context of product design for sustainability.
Strong sustainability requires that the system behavior indicators are primary and the
contribution of the parts is not uniquely defined. In other words, the emergent behavior of the
system is not deducible from the component behavior without complete knowledge. (Gallopin ,

R. Krishnaswamy et al.

1996) emphasizes the significance of modeling system behavior, inferred through situational
indicators, to make practical interpretations of the state of the system. However, the downside of
qualitative indicators is also acknowledged because of the value judgment involved. He
suggests a test for sustainability as valuation of the output of the system being non-decreasing
on some, not necessarily in economic terms, basis. This simplification is fraught with monotonic
growth, which is theoretically untenable in a closed system. An elaborate account of system
design approach may be found in (Sydenham, 2010). Considering the open challenges at the
system modeling endeavor, if there is a concerted effort at all, component behavior linked to
sustainability is likely to be less discernible.
Basis for Product sustainability testing. There are many definitions of sustainability to suit
the problem and its context because it is a normative concept. By extension, there is no
universal definition of sustainable product. Sustainability, by its basic connotation of
preservation of a system for a period, is about processes. Products are often results of
processes, and at the same time performers of processes. It is inevitable that sustainability
requirements emanate from the system level (in the environmental sustainability scenario it is
the environmental process) and, as design inputs, cascade down to the components. In the
absence of interactions among the components the system level indicators can be inferred by
simple aggregation of component values. The situation becomes complex when there are
interactions among components calling for comprehensive knowledge of the interactions to
know the system behavior.
The prevalent discourse on design for sustainability adopts a reductionist approach to aiding the
environmental sustainability through select principles applied in isolation. EcoDesign guidelines
(Yeang, 2008) acknowledges the lack of clarity of definition of sustainability. One of the
principles widely used is improvement, measured in terms of reduction of resource (material
and/or energy) and/or waste (emission included). A suite of methods and approaches are
employed to purportedly achieve product sustainability.
Research Question.
1. Can product sustainability be modeled as a test keeping process as the observed
phenomenon (with regard to a product claiming to be contributing to sustainability)?
2. What are the data/information needs for ascertaining product sustainability?
This work adopts
Theoretical inquiry and logical reasoning into testing products for sustainability
requirements.
Analysis of system-component structure for identifying the necessary and sufficient
conditions for testing components.
Assumptions: The results from the analysis of a conceptual depiction of the system with abstract
process and product scenarios are assumed to hold for specific products in process interactions
with attendant complexities being modeled suitably.
Testing products for sustainability Investigation. Setting certain bases is in order as
reference for the rest of the paper. Natural processes are multiply connected and boundaries
among the component (open) systems are only notional and not real. The set of variables
depicting the state of the environment is not fully known and attempts to model them are
iterative and ongoing. Even a restricted definition of environment from a product perspective will
have to account for the characteristics of local surroundings and many other products as part of
it.

Assessment of information adequacy of testing products for sustainability

For the purpose of establishing the information needed to perform product sustainability tests a
simple depiction of resource-consumption-regeneration process loop is employed with a
systematic elaboration to product-environment inter-dependencies. Figure 1 depicts a tworesource two-product system with associated consumption and regeneration processes.

Figure 1: Multiple Resource Multiple Product scenario

Product 1 and Product 2 consume resources 1 and 2 at rates indicated as CR1P1, CR2P1, CR1P2, CR2P2,
respectively where CR stands for Consumption Rate. Similarly, resource regeneration rates are indicated as RR1P1,
RR2P1, RR2P1, RR2P2. CR1, CR2 are net consumption rate of Resource1 and 2 respectively. RR1 and RR2 are
net regeneration rate of Resource1 and 2 respectively. Resource depletion rates DR1=CR1-RR1; DR2=CR2-RR2
Normative criteria for qualifying a product for sustainability should consider, for M resources and
N products, a total of N*M specifications for consumption rates. Theoretically, there is no unique
set of distributions of product consumption rates to meet an overall resource consumption rate
and in turn the depletion rate. Therefore, attributing a product as sustainable or otherwise is
dependent not only on its consumption and regeneration rates but also of the other product. The
observation at the system level, DR1 and DR2 along with the respective resource stocks,
conveys sustainability. E.g. Resource 1 will be sustainable for R1/DR1 time units. DR1 should
be zero for eternal persistence of the process and hence the products.
Modifying the above depiction to a single resource-multiple product system with attendant
consumption and regeneration processes and assuming batch mode of production (discrete
time) to simplify the explanation, a generalized expression for depletion rate (DR) for the single
resource will take the form
DR(t) = pi ni(t) - ai pi ni(t-Ri)
for i=1 to N(t), and t increases in steps of batch duration.
where DR is the net resource depletion rate,
pi is the per unit consumption rate of ith product,

R. Krishnaswamy et al.

ni is the number of producti produced per unit time,

ai is the regeneration coefficient for producti ,
and Ri is the retention time of resource in product pi before it enters the regeneration process
Reuse and recycling options increase the retention of resources thus delaying the regeneration.
One may treat this as extended life of the product though in different physical forms.
If the goal is to reduce the depletion rate, reduced consumption rate of one product will
decrease the overall rate if the consumption of the rest of the products is constant or reducing.
Proponents of product sustainability seemingly assume this condition because there is no
explicit reference to the rest of the products affecting the environment. The observable in such a
situation is at the system level and component performance does not provide definitive
information about that.
In addition, the possibility of many combinations at the component level (in this paper the
products) meeting the system level requirement exposes a blind spot in product sustainability
discourses. All products are sustainable as long as the consumption-depletion balance is
maintained within its life. But system sustainability is ideally for eternity through generations of
humans and products alike.
If N, the number of products, changes with time there is ambiguous relation between change in
(pi ni ) and DR. Knowledge about the consumption rate of the rest of the products is also
required. Reduction of (pi ni) - through either or both variables may be necessary for reducing
DR, but not sufficient. ni, ai and Ri are not product attributes and they are outside the scope of
product testing. In the extreme situation, in order to maintain minimum depletion rate some
products may have to be stopped. Such a situation is never an option at the product
sustainability because the producers assume the product is a need and not an option. Even Life
Cycle Assessments (LCA) compares product performances based on subjective definition of a
functional unit and do not consider system behaviour and product termination options. The use
of impact assessments on generalized environment in LCA databases offer little information
about the specific environment in which the product may exist and function.
Figure 1 may be easily modified for depicting emissions by replacing the consumptions with
emissions and resources with waste.
E.g. Emission norms for transport vehicles and pollution levels in cities highlight the missing
variables depicting the system level process. Improved individual vehicle emissions, as in Euro
emission standards, are not likely to reduce air pollution unless two other variables in the
polluting process are factored; number of vehicles running and the area of the city, both beyond
the scope at the product level testing.
Conclusions. Using a resource-consumption-regeneration depiction of process sustainability
the author highlights the lacuna of descriptions of product sustainability. Reductionist approach
to product sustainability may not help the designer to test the product for sustainability. In the
context of environmental sustainability, environment as system and product as component
transforms the problem of testing the product into testing a component in isolation. In a limited
sense, the test results only establish a necessary condition but do not prove sufficient in the
absence of information about performance of all components. This leads to the corollary that
testing of products for sustainability with respect to generalized description (model) of a
ubiquitous environment provides no assurance about sustainability. Consequently, the prevalent
approach of design for sustainable products using principle-as-solution (just reduction of
consumption by an arbitrary amount) is deficient in information about sustainability.

Assessment of information adequacy of testing products for sustainability

Summary of arguments:
1. Design for Sustainability is an earth system time-varying resource flow design endeavor,
and the specifications are not finalized yet. So, component-first design without wellfounded specifications is not guaranteed to converge on a desired system.
2. In terms of engineering design, principle is not solution; it is only a starting point.
Cohesive configuration of components is solution. Component testing without
specifications is ambiguous (and possibly counter-intuitive).
3. Sustainability is a process attribute. It is not binary without knowledge about the point of
no return. Tagging a product as sustainable or more/less sustainable is non-informative
without referring to the process and time. The same product in two different process
contexts may cause different impacts, so sustainability cannot be unambiguously
determined by testing the product for conformance to principle only.
It is evident that there is a need for establishing the prerequisites for taking the concept of
sustainability to the individual product level. A framework of system-component structure for
demarcating the design decision levels and test requirements from a system design perspective
is a logical extension to the propounded arguments.
References
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Meadows, D.H., Randers, J, Meadows, D.L., 2004, Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update,
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Gallopin, G.C., 1996, Environmental and sustainability indicators and the concept of
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Gaziulusoy, A.I., 2015, A critical review of approaches available for design and innovation teams
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Yeang, K., 2008, EcoDesignA manual for Ecological Design, Wiley Academy. ISBN 0470997788

R. Krishnaswamy et al.

Supplementary Information (It is not requirement, where appropriate, include data and
necessary information in this section separately)

Assessment of information adequacy of testing products for

sustainability
Ramani Krishnaswamy, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India,
ramani@cpdm.iisc.ernet.in
Monto Mani, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India, monto@astra.iisc.ernet.in