♻ Recyclability is NOT Sustainability! ❌

Recently this LinkedIn post went viral:

♻ Recyclability is NOT Sustainability! ❌

Yet recycling is top of most minds in association with it.🤷‍♂️

But...

✅ For a product to be sustainable, the product itself has to LAST!

There are three crucial elements that dictate the longevity and success of any product:

◾ Physical Durability

◾ Emotional Durability

◾ Fit Durability.

These three pillars serve as the foundation for products that are truly sustainable.

This post resonated with me on several levels.

First, I’ll summarize the 3 pillars in this way:

1. Physical durability: It is one of the strongest levers we have for sustainability. If an item lasts 5x-10x longer than a similar product, then fewer lesser-quality products need to be made. It’s intuitive to imagine the impact on the energy, water, chemicals, and raw materials required.

But mankind does not live on physical durability alone.

2. Emotional Durability: If a product doesn’t also make a strong and durable emotional connection with its user, it won’t get used. No matter how well it’s made. And then it sits. Only to be resold or donated later—in the BEST case.

The LIKELY Case

3. Fit Durability: Moreover, if a created product isn’t useful (preferably multi-use), doesn’t fit, or isn’t a go-to item in a user’s daily life, then more harm than good will occur. Especially if built for the long haul.

The LinkedIn author is right to say that these 3 pillars are interdependent. Each relies on the other.

Yet, from my experience, our current product practices skimp on making things that last (#1) and shortcut emotional and lifestyle durability (#’s 2 and 3).

Worn, reworked, reworn — Patagonia

For lasting products to become the norm, we must take the time to understand WHY we should make them in the first place.

Understanding the user’s needs, desires, and motivations is the root of making something that lasts.

When we invest in the process to find the needs of others, we inform a robust product brief. Thus enabling sustainability in a deeper way.