We are living through an era of dizzying change: geopolitics and supply chains, market shifts, technologies we had only seen in utopias and dystopias… There are also slower but inexorable changes, such as certain regulations. At the European level, we’ll be talking specifically about the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR).

To get through all this complexity, not by succumbing to it but by becoming more resilient, we need to design our paths through the fog. Here we’ll talk about strategic (eco)design, and about the Ecodesign Competition at the National Environment Congress, which we encourage you to enter.

Strategic ecodesign: beyond the product, beyond the environmental

Ecodesign is a practice that has evolved alongside Industrial Design and environmental assessment, with methods such as Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). These practices have developed in tandem: assessment methods have become more rigorous, the design discipline has sharpened to incorporate them, and our understanding of what eco means has grown broader and deeper.

The Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR) itself reflects this progress. The previous Directive, which it replaces, focused only on the energy efficiency of products. The new regulation extends to many more products and takes a broader view of the environmental. It is no longer just about energy consumption, but about circularity aspects, such as repairability or recycled content, and others related to healthy chemical substances and substances of concern.

Although the ESPR regulates the “product,” it goes much further. To comply with regulations and make our companies more resilient and robust, we also have to redesign services (the intangibles), that layer sitting on top of the product. And more than that, we have to redesign business models so that they are circular and smart. Industrial Design has long turned its attention to services and businesses; we could argue that designing the industrial goes beyond designing the object, and that we need to design supply chains, value networks, and relationships. But beyond that, in our complex, post-industrial, knowledge-based society, the object of design is no longer the product. That is why we speak of strategic (eco)design.

At the same time, the very concept of eco has to go beyond the environmental. The environmental is the vast sphere in which we live immersed: eco implies an awareness of this very broad sphere, of the world around us, of the species and natural processes that extend beyond the human. But the inner spheres cannot be neglected. The social, which makes up the relationships and the fabric of human societies, and the fulfillment of our needs (from food to political participation and cultural fulfillment), is the next layer within eco. And within that social sphere, we find the economic: the set of systems, institutions, products, and tools that we humans have created to meet those needs we were talking about. Businesses know this well: the economic bottom line is the most basic foundation of their activity. So eco, that expanded, extended, higher awareness, should be able to incorporate this systemic vision of the three spheres. That is why, at Monnou, we often speak of the Triple Bottom Line, Triple Result, or Triple Impact: environmental, social, economic.

CONAMA: The National Environment Congress

This is where we come in: we are at CONAMA. It is a place where multiple stakeholders (the private and public sectors, Academia, NGOs…) come together at the national level every two years around the contested question of Sustainability. And, as one would expect, CONAMA takes shape in a participatory way with these groups.

At CONAMA, we coordinate the ECODESIGN Technical Committee, which will bring some news this year. We always do so from that broad perspective on design (beyond products) and on eco (beyond the environmental).

What is not new this year, because good things should never change, is the Ecodesign Competition. It is a widely acclaimed event that already embraces this vision of ecodesign across products, services, business models, and strategies. Of course, with each edition we evolve and take a few small steps forward. In this one, the competition adds some criteria that go further.

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The Ecodesign Competition

The Competition is open for entries until Friday, October 16. There are many advantages to participating, whether you belong to a large company or come from a medium-sized, small, or micro business. And if consulting is your field, this is also a great time to submit that project you did with your client.

The competition values design not only at the product level, but also as applied to services and business models. You can see the competition rules, the information website, and how to submit your entry. And, as we said, this year the evaluation criteria have been expanded.

First, as could not be otherwise, we are taking one more step in incorporating social criteria, not just environmental ones. We already had criteria such as restoration of natural heritage, climate change mitigation and adaptation, and food waste prevention. We also have a criterion that is both environmental and socioeconomic: contribution to sustainable territories and to the demographic challenge. And now, more explicitly: a user-centered approach and consideration of vulnerable groups.

Second, we have included an explicit criterion of alignment with the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2024/1781), given that this regulation is already a reality that companies must begin adapting to. The ESPR represents an unprecedented advance for many sectors, including textiles, which we will discuss in more detail at the Ecodesign Technical Session at CONAMA. And it is an opportunity to make us stronger as a European business community.

Making the transitions to sustainability

MAKING. This is the motto of this CONAMA 2026 edition. Thinking, but also making it real. Carrying it out. Turning it into reality.

And this is what we invite you to join. We’ll see you between November 30 and December 3 at the IFEMA North Convention Center in Madrid.

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