ECO-DESIGN, THE CORNERSTONE OF THE GOBIAPPROACH
Gobi was created in 2010 to fight against single-use plastic, which was - and still is - symbolized by disposable mineral water bottles, plastic and cardboard cups, plastic cutlery and so on.
Our first suggestion was to imagine a bottle. And immediately came the thought: "We need to be sure that this bottle is better than the solutions it is intended to replace".
It was this reflection that led us to discover and immediately adopt the principles of eco-design.
Since then, all our products have been preventively eco-designed, i.e. before they are even manufactured, to maximize their impact.
BUT WHAT ISECO-DESIGN?
This approach aims to identify and reduce the environmental impact of a product throughout its life cycle.
As AFNOR puts it, "Eco-design consists in integrating the environment right from the design stage of a product or service, and at all stages of its life cycle."
WHAT IS THE BOTTLE LIFE CYCLE?
Knowing the life cycle of a bottle means identifying all the stages in its life. In simplified terms, we take into account :
- Extraction of raw materials (or recycling of raw materials)
- Manufacture of bottle (in a factory or workshop)
- The use of bottle (how it is used, washed, dried, etc.)
- The "end of life" of bottle (how it is disposed of, recycled, etc.)
It's quite simplified, because between stages 1 and 2, there's transport, for example. Between stages 2 and 3, there's "packaging", i.e. the packaging used: where is it made, how is it made? To be precise, we also need to consider the packaging life cycle within the bottle life cycle!
WHAT DOESLIFE CYCLE ANALYSIS MEAN?
To know all the impacts generated by a product, we have carried out a Life Cycle Assessment (or "LCA") = at each stage of the life cycle, we analyze its impact on the environment. For our bottle indoor, for example, we questioned and measured :
- for its glass bottle: how was it produced, where was it made, how many kilometers did the recycled glass containers travel, how much electricity was produced to make 1 bottle, what is the impact in terms of CO2 emissions for manufacturing, etc.?
- for the formi cap: where does the "petrochemical" part come from, where does the biosourced part come from, what energy consumption was necessary to manufacture the biosourced part, what is the impact in terms of CO2 emissions, etc.?
We analyze EVERYTHING: transport, the manufacture of packaging cartons (where? how are they transported to our assembly center? are they recycled cartons?), the printing of our Gobicards, transport to our customer (how many Gobis in a carton? are there any over-packaging? If so, what is their environmental "weight"), use (how many washes per week? what is the electricity consumption of the dishwasher or water heating) and end-of-life (will bottle be buried? sorted for recycling? if so, what are the channels, what is their impact...).
In the end, we can tell you exactly how much it cost the environment to manufacture a bottle Gobi.
AND WHY IS THEREFERENCEIMPORTANT?
At Gobi, we always do preventive eco-design. This means that we do the LCA work BEFORE we manufacture our product. This allows us to modify its design, material, packaging, transport, washing instructions... BEFORE it is manufactured.
So we save on impact BEFORE the product even exists, because 80% of its environmental impact is defined before it is designed.
And to carry out preventive ecodesign of a product, to know whether it is of interest compared to the solution it replaces, we always define a usage reference: for a usage (for example, water consumption in the office), we analyze the studies available on the market, statistics, public data and the surveys we carry out, and we determine how users respond to this usage. For bottle, they respond by using :
- disposable water bottles
- paper cups
- plastic cups
- glass glasses and carafe
So we also analyze the impact of the reference, and compare the impact of the reference with the impact of the product we're creating. This enables us to check that our solutions are more advantageous than the products we are replacing!
And yes: it's not enough to replace disposable with sustainable to be virtuous. For some uses, it could even be the opposite.
A CONCRETE EXAMPLE?
With a bottle Gobi indoor - and only with a bottle Gobi indoor, not just any bottle even in a similar material - therefore, with a bottle Gobi indoor, you avoid the emission of 5.29kg of CO2eq - and you avoid generating 1.59kg of waste every year!
HOW DO YOU GET STARTED WITHECO-DESIGN?
Eco-design requires a thorough understanding of materials, manufacturing processes and their impact. We have been working with a specialist eco-design consultancy, Coopérative Mu, since 2010.
We have also received support from ADEME and BPI to carry out these eco-design studies.
AND THEN?
We continue to eco-design new products, such as our first lunch box. We regularly update our environmental assessments. Consumers are changing their behavior (fortunately!), and their use of disposables is evolving, which has an impact on the benchmark described above.
And yes, eco-design is a long-term process, which evolves in line with technical and behavioral innovations in society.