8. Discussion
Section 7.1 concludes that the seat made of pure natural cork has
the best result, due to the less use of energy and compounding
materials. Section 7.2 concludes that the cork itself has a very good
Eco-cost compared to many other materials as wood, metals and
polymers. However, the materials that are combined with cork in
the design process, should carefully be selected, to achieve a good
total EVR solution. It is therefore relevant that designers start with
an open creative design approach, and continue with a “step by
step” EVR re-design method to improve the cork solutions in terms
of eco-costs and customer perceived value.
A rather standard reaction of the project team members during
the Eco-cost/EVR assessment was the remark “that you can make
every product sustainable by setting the price high”. That is true,
but a prerequisite for a high price is a high customer perceived
value, since without a high Willingness To Pay (WTP) a high price is
not possible (nobody will buy the product). It is the talent of the
designer that creates the value of the product.
A surprising issue for most designers is that the selection of
materials really matters in terms of sustainability: Fig. 10 shows an
enormous variation in eco-costs per kilogram (note that the axis is
logarithmic). The importance of materials selection on the basis on
the eco-burden seems to be forgotten by many environmentalists:
it is not only recycling (C2C) which is important, but also the ecoburden
of primary production. Natural materials score generally
well in terms of eco-costs.
It is obvious that End-of-Life is very important. Cork has
favourable end-of-life characteristics in the field of recycling as well
as in the field of combustion with heat recovery (giving in LCA a
“credit” for not burning fossil fuels instead). However, it was
decided that it was perhaps not realistic to assume that all these
products are recycled or burned with heat recovery. Such an
assumption seems to be wishful thinking at this moment, since a lot
of these products will end up in land-fill. For the far future, however,
a lot can be gained by better end-of-life solutions.
It is concluded that Cork is a great material for Sustainable
Design, and has great characteristics in terms of eco-efficient value
creation. The creativity of the Designers, developing value added
products with cork, is of the most relevant aspects of Eco-cost/EVR
results. Such positive results will contribute to a positive “eco-label”
market position during the following diffusion phase of the
new cork products.