As businesses and brands increasingly design for household environments, incorporating user behaviours that support sustainability can make or break a product’s success. This article shares seven guidelines for designing products that encourage sustainable behaviours during the use phase, based on pioneering user-centred research conducted in Brazil, India and UK households through in-context interviews, observations and laundry diaries.

Ensure that the users can control the various resource inputs and outputs of the process. In the case of Brazilian laundries, this is achieved through top-loading machines where the water is added by the user, visualising the waste water and allowing them to adapt the water use to suit their specific washing needs (e.g. by adding garments halfway through the cycle). In contrast, most British machines are installed into the plumbing system so they cannot be controlled or modified and consumers have a much lower understanding of their resource consumption because the machine is hidden away in the kitchen.

Sustainable Solutions: Exploring Dry Wash in Brazil

Lavanderia was founded by two Argentine sisters in 1994 who wanted to revolutionize car-washing in Brazil. Their invention of an eco-friendly wax that cleans cars spotless without the need for any water saved millions of gallons of the precious commodity and is now sold worldwide. Their business is thriving, attracting billionaire execs to their ‘cleaning and polishing’ services for private jets, too. This year they are opening a new branch in Brazil that offers end-to-end laundry services, delivering washed and ironed clothes straight to your door.