CONSULTANCY
Eco Interiors provides expertise in sustainable product development and ecodesign.

Eco Interiors offers consultancy for a range of clients - including developers, manufacturers, social enterprises and commercial organisations - to help them create solutions for moving towards sustainability.

Eco Interiors uses innovative and upstream strategies that help to reduce resource consumption and waste management, improve production efficiency and economical performance, and create new business opportunities.

Eco Interiors can assist with:
• environmental audits and impact assessments
• materials sourcing and analysis
• product life cycle analysis
• sustainble product development
• developing waste and recycling strategies
• industrial ecology
• recommending environmentally conscious contractors

Conserving resources and energy are key strategies to minimise waste and consumption. But regeneration and stewardship are also required to restore and maintain our ecosystems.

Sustainable Product Development is a systems based strategy for developing products and services along fundamental principles for sustainability that respect people and planet and prevent the systemic degradation of nature’s resources, the ecosphere and society.

Ecodesign encompasses a broad range of tools and methods to minimise environmental impact throughout the life cycle of a product - from the extraction of raw materials, the production process, the use of a product, and the product’s disposal. Strategies of product improvement or redesign can then be implemented to reduce the overall environmental impact of an existing product, or help to define the development of a new product concept.

Environmental Impact Assessment is a method to assess key environmental impacts of a product or service.

Ecological Footprinting is a resource accounting tool that calculates the area of land required to produce products and services. It can be used to measure the ecological footprint of any system form an individual, an organization, a city, a nation or the whole planet. There is currently enough land in the world to allow 1.8 hectares per person. The UK average is 4.5 hectares/per person, so we are consuming beyond the capacity of the earth’s resources.

Cradle to cradle – is a step beyond the ‘cradle to grave’ life cycle approach. It is inspired by nature’s ecosystems, which have no concept of waste - the waste of one species is the food of another. This approach looks at creating closed loop cycles in industry, where waste is a resource and technical and biological materials are maintained in continuous recycling systems.

Industrial Ecology – similar to ‘cradle to cradle’ in concept, where a cluster of businesses work together in developing a network of symbiotic relationships, enabling resources to be shared and waste to be eliminated.

To build a sustainable future we need to create 'no waste economies' where materials can be continuously recycled in closed loop systems. An ecological understanding is imperative, where we can respect, engage and learn from nature.