Authors
Suppen, Nydia; Ariza, Raquel; Chacón, Alejandro
Abstract
This paper presents the outcomes and lessons learnt from the virtual Latin American conference EcodAl held on October 28-30, 2020. EcodAl seeks to consolidate a network in Latin America, generating a space of knowledge led by the scientific community to facilitate the transition towards the sustainability of society. Five main topics on how to frame and manage ecodesign are outlined and discussed in this paper, from the perspective of people as the centre of problems and solutions, humanity itself is the architect of its destiny, framed in space and time that does not allow any further delays to achieve a better quality of life; these topics are:•Technical aspects of Ecodesign and LCA scan with concrete experiences in Latin America that shows the benefits for people to implement life cycle thinking and measure it. • Public policies for Ecodesign, highlighting the experiences that count from collective actions such as the ecodesign approach that generates genuine value for people. • Industry 4.0 Emerging technologies for sustainability and how the strategies that link 4.0 technologies allow the achievement of Sustainable Development Goals. • Ecodesign and COVID-19, analyzing how emerging experiences to the Covid-19 contingency lead to new ways of intervening for the pandemic and post-pandemic. The results of carrying out the EcodAl challenge virtually will be highlighted. The coaching and practical implementation of people-centred ecodesign solutions with multi-disciplinary and multi-country teams, allowed us to collaboratively work with companies from Argentina, Chile and Mexico and propose alternative views of products and services from a systemic approach that ecodesign gives us. The paper will also include an analysis of the discussions raised as future challenges to think about the new context and challenges of businesses in the region to develop people-centred ecodesign and eco-innovation.