Consumer Products Blog
The eco-vacs are coming
By Edd Brunner - Last updated: Monday, September 5, 2011
Roger and I headed to IFA on Friday to share the latest result of our Ecovation process, Stem – our concept for reducing the impact vacuums have on the environment by 27% and reducing the energy used by 43%. We had some really good meetings with a number of the big manufacturers, so it was a very useful visit.
As usual, it was interesting to go round the different appliance manufacturers and see what the latest was. If anything, eco was more integrated into products than ever before. It is clearly a big issue for all the manufacturers, with most products having ‘eco inside’ or a green leaf written all over them. This is great, as it means that manufacturers are taking the impact that their products have on the environment seriously – moving it from a niche range of products to the core of every product they sell.
Vacuum cleaners were certainly one of the products getting this treatment. Bosch has optimized the air path design and compressor design so they can reduce the electrical power whilst maintaining the same cleaning performance on their new Relaxx’x product, adding the ‘Green Technology Inside’ logo on the box. Siemens claim they have done even better than us with their Z 6.0 Green Power range, saving up to 60% on electricity use.
These products have implemented one of our concepts – optimising the air paths. However, they still require the user to change the power setting or mode depending on what they are doing. That is unlike our concept which would automatically change power depending on mode, making it much easier to (and likely that) the user will make those all important energy savings.
Our Ecovation process can be applied to any product to ensure all solutions for reducing eco impact are identified and then assessed against relevant criteria – this results in a radical change rather than incremental steps in eco improvement. Radical changes usually brings conflict – with Stem, the conflict was a slight increase in BoM (Bill of Materials) cost. When we ran this process last year on a tumble drier, the conflict there was form factor – the product needed to look more like a wardrobe than the regular under worktop tumble drier. I was therefore fascinating to see a ‘clothes refresher‘ at the LG stand in the same shape as our concept. Only available in the Asian market at the moment, but could this conflict be something consumers accept, making our drier concept feasible?
The environment is certainly on appliance manufacturers minds with eco inspired products appearing all the time – the question is whether consumer are willing to change their behavior or accept something slightly different about their products.
