Faglige nøgleord: climate change, sustainability, planetary boundaries, eco-design, circular economy, life-cycle assessment
Oplæg tilgængeligt på: engelsk og fransk
There are today plenty of products that we perceive as sustainable; those can go from products using recycled materials to energy-efficient machines for example. But when we are asked what this means, we usually come up with the justification that those products are environmentally better than others fulfilling the same function. Water bottles are for example perceived as better than plastic bottles because we think they have lower environmental impacts. So what we truly mean is actually that they are more sustainable. But does more sustainable mean sustainable enough? If not, how to define a product that is sustainable enough?
My PhD builds on the concept of Absolute sustainability. The idea: acknowledging that we live in a finite planet that offers limited environmental budgets for all our activities.
My goal is to downscale those budgets for products, and help companies design products that are not just better than they are today, but that are good enough from an absolute perspective.