Ecode­sign Prize 2022

With 14 win­ners, the Fed­er­al Ecode­sign Award once again hon­ors a range of future-ori­ent­ed solu­tions for a wide vari­ety of chal­lenges. These include intel­li­gent­ly designed lights, a sea­son­al cal­en­dar for green elec­tric­i­ty, pre­fab­ri­cat­ed foun­da­tions for wind tur­bines, a deposit chair as well as pro­gres­sive con­cepts for the trans­for­ma­tion of the cloth­ing indus­try and the data-based rewet­ting of peat­lands. Five of the 14 awards go to Bavaria!

“How good or harm­ful a prod­uct is for the envi­ron­ment is large­ly deter­mined by its design. (…) For more than ten years, the win­ning projects of the Fed­er­al Ecode­sign Award have repeat­ed­ly shown what sus­tain­able prod­ucts or ser­vices of the future can look like. The inter­play of out­stand­ing design and ecol­o­gy is the unique sell­ing point of the prize. Envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly prod­ucts and ser­vices are the key to sus­tain­able con­sump­tion,” says Fed­er­al Envi­ron­ment Min­is­ter Stef­fi Lemke, whose min­istry has been award­ing the prize togeth­er with the Fed­er­al Envi­ron­ment Agency and the Inter­na­tion­al Design Cen­ter Berlin since 2012.

A num­ber of projects by design­ers, uni­ver­si­ties and com­pa­nies with which we have spe­cial ties were also honored.

At FACH­PACK 2022, the young design­er Helène Fontaine (Burg Giebichen­stein Kun­sthochschule Halle, Sax­ony-Anhalt) already made a name for her­self with her easy-to-open i‑si tray pack­ag­ing. She has now won an award in the young design­ers cat­e­go­ry for her OPV green­house film 2harvest. The durable and flex­i­ble 2harvest green­house film made of PET has inte­grat­ed organ­ic pho­to­volta­ic cells. This enables dual use of agri­cul­tur­al land, as ener­gy and food can be pro­duced in parallel.

A stu­dent project from Coburg Uni­ver­si­ty of Applied Sci­ences also received an award in the young tal­ent cat­e­go­ry. The app PeakPick by Sascha Greilinger is a sea­son­al cal­en­dar for green elec­tric­i­ty. By shift­ing the switch­ing on of appli­ances to a peri­od with a high pro­por­tion of ener­gy pro­duc­tion from wind and solar plants, the prin­ci­ple of load shift­ing is also applied in pri­vate households.

bay­ern design mem­ber and MCBW spon­sor Steel­case received an award in the prod­uct cat­e­go­ry for its Flex Perch stand­ing stool. The Steel­case stand­ing stool is the world’s first piece of fur­ni­ture made with plas­tic from BAS­F’s Chem­Cy­cling project, he said. This tech­nol­o­gy cre­ates a new type of raw mate­r­i­al from a waste stream from elec­tron­ics production.

In the same cat­e­go­ry, the AYNO lumi­naire fam­i­ly from Diez Office in Munich received an award. AYNO’s LED and trans­former can be replaced by plug-in con­nec­tions, mak­ing it one of the first LED lumi­naires that can be repaired by cus­tomers with­out tools. Already made from recy­cled mate­ri­als, it can itself be eas­i­ly sep­a­rat­ed into three recy­clable pri­ma­ry materials.

The Nurem­berg-based com­pa­ny ball‑b tack­led a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent prob­lem. Until now, high­ly tox­ic baits have often been hung unpro­tect­ed in the sew­er for rat con­trol. Even in sewage treat­ment plants, these tox­ins are only degrad­ed to a small extent. With the Tox­Pro­tect bait pro­tec­tion box­es, the baits now no longer come into con­tact with water, even dur­ing floods. This saves up to 98% of poi­son baits or sev­er­al 100 tons in Ger­many and the haz­ardous sub­stances are no longer deposit­ed in the envi­ron­ment. In addi­tion: a cloud-based web ser­vice enables effi­cient mon­i­tor­ing of rat activ­i­ty and makes thou­sands of con­trol vis­its by car obso­lete. The box­es are pro­duced local­ly and can be reused.

In the cat­e­go­ry young talents

• 5 TONS by Maren Klamser (Bauhaus Uni­ver­si­ty Weimar, Thuringia) is a min­er­al and recy­clable sol­id mate­r­i­al made from brick dust from bro­ken mason­ry and recy­cled aggre­gate from min­er­al con­struc­tion waste. The mate­r­i­al is the basis of a dry stack­ing sys­tem for mason­ry blocks.
• re:wet — peat:lab by Milan Bergheim (weißensee kun­sthochschule berlin, Berlin) is a ser­vice blue­print for the rewet­ting of peat­lands. With peat:lab, farm­ers col­lect data such as ter­rain heights or water lev­els and store them in a dig­i­tal twin. In this way, mea­sures for rewet­ting can be planned and coordinated.

In the Con­cept category

• With the Shared Fac­to­ry from ito ito GmbH (head office: Bre­men), one/one GbR (head office: Bre­men), fash­ion labels and knit­ting mills become part of a dig­i­tal on-demand design and pro­duc­tion plat­form for knitwear. With the SaaS solu­tion, designs can be dig­i­tized, freely mod­i­fied, first sold and then produced.

In the cat­e­go­ry Service

• reverse.supply by RS Recom­merce Tech­nolo­gies GmbH (head­quar­tered in Berlin) offers with its recom­merce plat­form an effi­cient solu­tion for fash­ion retail­ers to set up or expand their own sec­ond-hand store and to deal with returns, over­hangs or B‑goods in a sus­tain­able as well as eco­nom­i­cal­ly sen­si­ble way.
• REX from Cir­cu­form B. V. (Head­quar­ters: De Meern, The Nether­lands) with Stu­dio Ineke Hans (Head­quar­ters: Arn­hem, The Nether­lands) is the first Dutch deposit chair that can be returned at any time to local Cir­cu­form col­lec­tion points for a refund. Returned deposit chairs are inspect­ed and cleaned, repaired if nec­es­sary and resold — again with a deposit.

In the cat­e­go­ry Product

• HIIVE by HIIVE UG (Head­quar­ters: Tel­tow, Bran­den­burg, Ger­many) pro­vides hon­ey bees with a nat­ur­al, species-appro­pri­ate home by cater­ing to the ani­mals’ needs. The design repli­cates the micro­cli­mate of a tree cav­i­ty, the bees’ nat­ur­al habi­tat. The mod­u­lar design ensures easy reparability.
• V‑Locker Smart Bike Park­ing Sys­tem by V‑Locker AG (head­quar­tered in Düben­dorf, Switzer­land) with Mey­er-Hay­oz Design Engi­neer­ing AG (head­quar­tered in Win­terthur, Switzer­land) is an auto­mat­ed park­ing sys­tem that can safe­ly store up to 60 bikes in one car park­ing space. Thanks to indi­vid­ual facade design, the mod­u­lar tow­ers blend into the urban envi­ron­ment. Oper­a­tion is intu­itive via smart­phone app.
• The wind pow­er pre­cast foun­da­tions from Smart & Green Mukran Con­crete GmbH (com­pa­ny head­quar­ters: Sass­nitz, Meck­len­burg-West­ern Pomera­nia) for wind tur­bines con­sist of pre­cast rib and ring ele­ments and the anchor cage. They require up to 70% less con­crete and can be trans­port­ed to the con­struc­tion site by approx. 40 stan­dard trucks and installed there with­in one week.
• The X‑Change tech­nol­o­gy of Molto Luce GmbH (head­quar­tered in Wels, Aus­tria) allows easy replace­ment of an LED board with­out hav­ing to change the entire lumi­naire. The change is car­ried out by means of a bay­o­net catch and works com­plete­ly with­out tools.

The Fed­er­al Min­istry for the Envi­ron­ment and the Fed­er­al Envi­ron­ment Agency (UBA) have been award­ing the Fed­er­al Ecode­sign Prize every year since 2012 togeth­er with the Inter­na­tion­al Design Cen­ter Berlin. The com­pe­ti­tion hon­ors out­stand­ing work that is con­vinc­ing from an envi­ron­men­tal and design per­spec­tive in the four cat­e­gories of prod­uct, ser­vice, con­cept and young tal­ent. It is aimed at com­pa­nies of all sizes and sec­tors as well as students.

Inno­v­a­tive con­tent, design qual­i­ty and envi­ron­men­tal prop­er­ties are the main cri­te­ria in the eval­u­a­tion. Effects on every­day cul­ture and con­sumer behav­ior are also tak­en into account. The entire prod­uct life cycle is tak­en into account, from the pre­lim­i­nary stages of pro­duc­tion, through man­u­fac­tur­ing, dis­tri­b­u­tion and use, right up to the “end of life”.