A product-driven sustainability guideline – methodological conception and implementation based on a lifestyle sports shoe

Engineering of Sport 15 - Proceedings from the 15th International Conference on the Engineering of Sport (ISEA 2024)

In addition to performance, the sustainability aspect is an increasing factor in creating product value. Therefore, the sporting goods industry strives to integrate different concepts to design, manufacture and integrate materials in an environmentally conscious manner. Common, state-of-the-art frameworks such as the life cycle assessment or toolkits for the circular economy are rather too complicated to directly integrate industry-relevant sustainability indicators (recycled content, recycling loops) or too high in the sense of circular economy decision support. The aim of the present study is to provide a useful and flexible guide that supports a pragmatic workflow for integrating product-driven sustainability indicators. In addition, a user-oriented, simple decision-making process is shown to evaluate a comparison of different products or an improved new product. The the guideline is verified through a case study using a lifestyle sports shoe and a more "sustainable" configuration.