sustainable design

Annular Design believes in a future of sustainable product/packaging solutions for people around the world. This belief has expanded, understanding how complex and diverse sustainability is for business and clients looking to enable sustainability action, change and progression.

WHAT WE ENJOY DOING IN THIS SPACE

  • New products/packaging that are better for the world.

  • Embedded Design impact evaluation, materials and adaptation, user/consumer evaluation, Impact assessment.

  • Circular economy solutions, innovative product/material led projects, recapture and reuse solutions, waste valorisation (make waste valuable).

  • Research and Grants, get access to research partners for longer projects as well as access grant funding from across Australia.

Sustainability is essential, not a ‘nice to have’

  • Sustainable design is core in our design process at Annular design. We incorporate leading circular economy principles of the 7R’s; Rethink, Reduce, Reuse, Repurpose, Repair, Remove, Recycle. Other elements to sustainable design include:

    • Material selection/access to novel, emerging materials.

    • Design impact, Co2 footprint.

    • Impact reduction via design, fabrication, supply chain and end of life.

  • Evaluate the product/packaging design impact to ensure best, lowest impact design developed. We look at these elements of a design as part of our evaluation: 

    • Provenance

    • Materials

    • Production

    • Usage

    • Transportation

    • Collection

    • End of life

    • Repurposing

  • Creative strategy is for business or large complex challenges that require a mixture of innovation methodologies, commercialisation techniques and design thinking to create unique strategic solutions.

    • For projects outside of direct product of packaging solutions

    • Challenges could be: how to rapidly decarbonise with products, systems, government, social or business challenges.

  • Workshops are a great way to access knowledge and accelerate teams ability to provide solutions and context to sustainability, business, product or packaging challenges. Workshops on the following topics:

    • Design Sprint (Idea to prototype)

    • Ideation (Idea generation)

    • Design thinking to solve a challenge

    • White space/opportunity identification

    • Knowledge mapping

    • Competitor/Product Mapping

Our work

product design, sustainable design

PROJECT case study

Reusable Sushi Container- sushi Jiro

Brief to eliminate single use plastic take-way containers from sushi chain across Australia

Design of a re-usable sushi take away container that housed soy without spilling, condiments and even a nook for your chop sticks. The design improved usability, user experience and personalisation.

Using 100% recycled HDPE from Singapore, sustainable impact was measured from across the life cycle compared to single use plastic container. 

Even factoring washing cycles (dishwasher) over lifetime, this container’s Co2 footprint was less impactful after avoiding three single use plastic containers.

workshop case study

Large Scale Solar Design Sprint- Monash University

Design sprint workshop series using design thinking methodology to tackle large scale solar implementation across research, energy sector, government and project stakeholders. Workshop facilitation for over 80 professionals.

DISCOVER- Understand current technology, science, impact, energy sector challenges, infrastructure, environmental impacts.

DEFINE- Key challenges to large scale solar projects and implementation identified and selected best areas of exploration for novel solutions.

CREATE- Problem and idea templates used for leading three solutions to be explored by teams formed by research and industry partners.

Solutions from these workshops were research and developed by a core team of Monash researchers, professionals and government representatives.