Leveraging Insights from Unique Artifacts for Creating Sustainable Products

Abstract Sustainable manufacturing pursues the achievement of economic, environmental, and societal benefits by promoting the long-term use of materials, products, and components within a circular economy. The analysis of one-of-a-kind classical products reveal some designs that exhibit a creative combination of parts from a variety of industrial sectors. For example, Italian designers behind some innovative artifacts have managed to integrate components from different sources into attractive and emotional-oriented objects that are revered to this day. The present work aims to combine 6R-based sustainable manufacturing with insights gained from some classical products of Italian design characterized by simplicity and decontextualization of common objects. This manuscript presents the design process for leveraging concepts embodied in some unique artifacts from the Italian design movement to inspire the realization of sustainable products. A commercial household item was redesigned to demonstrate the application of the approach by utilizing end-of-life items collected from municipal solid waste. The potential benefits of the triple bottom line approach associated with leveraging concepts, such as those from Italian design, to develop more sustainable products is also discussed.