Article Name Shifting product design to net-zero sustainability
By Pete Bartolik Contributed By DigiKey's North American Editors
Major forces are aligning to ensure a significant business requirement for sustainability over the next few decades. Around the globe, governments, businesses, and people are rallying to support a net-zero carbon emissions goal for 2050. Product designers would be well advised to factor net-zero sustainability into their future product plans or risk losing business to competitors better able to respond to intense market pressures. The National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) reported at the end of 2022 that 58% of surveyed manufacturer
executives believe sustainability is essential to future competitiveness, substantially higher than for a similar survey in 2019. [i] Sustainability, in the case of manufacturers and producers, refers to the ability to continue processes and practices over time without depleting resources such as the energy, materials, and water on which they depend. The term net zero was codified in 2015 under the auspices of the United Nations when 196 countries adopted the Paris Agreement, an international, legally binding treaty. [ii] Subsequently, in 2017, a UN
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