Can the sustainable design movement remould consumerism?

Environmentalists and green businesses have a major problem when it comes to the issue of consumption.

Deep green environmentalists argue that we must urgently curb consumption if we are to deliver a sustainable economic model, while business leaders often counter that, without continued growth in consumption, they cannot generate the revenue necessary to reinvest in the creation of that sustainable economic model.

Manufacturers say they would supply greener goods if customers were prepared to pay the premium required to produce them, but the risk remains that relatively slow demand for sustainable products would make such products financially unviable.

It is Catch-22 that even the most conscientious green firms struggle to deal with.

But if businesses are essentially the architects of consumer society through advertising and branding, convincing people that their lives would be better if they owned the latest pair of Nike trainers, an iPad or a BlackBerry, is it not also the responsibility of those businesses to reshape consumerism by changing what customers demand?

This was the question raised at a conference in Paris earlier this month by Jochen Zeitz, former chief executive of PUMA, who has just been appointed head of the new sustainability division of PPR, the owner of sports and luxury brands including PUMA, Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent.

Responding to a question on how the majority of the carbon savings the company delivers will be offset by increasing consumer demand, Zeitz maintained that businesses now have a responsibility to create products which have no impact or even a positive impact on the environment.

Only by going beyond efficiency measures and completely redesigning goods will businesses be able to take full responsibility for consumerism, he said.

"If you take products that can be reunified with nature, such as those that are fully biodegradable, or you recreate a tyre into another product, then we can create a biological and technical cycle which rejuvenates itself," he said. "That is the challenge we are facing now."

As head of PPR Home, Zeitz has an annual €10m budget to deliver innovative designs for PPR's brands. To do this, the division has launched a so-called Creative Sustainability Lab to research materials that can be developed into new sustainable products and product lines.

The lab will also examine ways of tackling supply chain emissions, or how to take and redevelop products after their useful lives and up-cycle them into new products or business opportunities.

The process is still in its early days, and PPR told BusinessGreen that it plans to produce initial targets in October and subsequently set priorities and timelines for new products.

But while PPR's aim of creating closed-loop products is ambitious, it is not unprecedented. The company will be working with Cradle-to-Cradle, a model which encourages firms to go beyond the traditional goal of cutting carbon by designing out the whole concept of waste and eliminating toxicity.

PUMA's rival Nike has been researching and developing Cradle-to-Cradle designs for more than a decade. Indeed, last year's FIFA World Cup saw many players wearing Nike jerseys made almost entirely from plastic bottles rescued from landfills in Japan and Taiwan.

So perhaps it is unsurprising that competition is also motivating PPR's new sustainability drive. Speaking in Paris, Zeitz said that businesses need to keep up with the speed of operational change in the market to remain competitive.

Last year, PUMA replaced the much loved, but carbon intensive, shoebox with a new sustainable shoe bag. And alongside the launch of PPR Home last month, the brand group said that it would publish an environmental profit and loss statement in a bid to more accurately measure the success of its green initiatives.

Cradle-to-Cradle, like biomimicry, is fast becoming a tangible way for businesses to improve their green credentials and drive design innovation. These models also give weight to the argument that consumers can continue to purchase high quality goods without negatively affecting the environment.

However, despite PUMA's ambition, it remains to be seen what new materials will be delivered and whether the company will succeed in integrating Cradle-to-Cradle designs into the core of its manufacturing processes.