4 trends in sustainable design, and how you can adopt them

Sustainability used to be a brand flex. Now, it’s the bare minimum. The equivalent of washing your hands after using the bathroom – expected, not applauded.

Brands can’t just slap a '100% recycled' sticker on some packaging design and get a nice handshake from the world (with or without washing). The real frontier is in materials, manufacturing, and product longevity. But how are designers moving beyond greenwashing and reshaping sustainability into something more radical? What are the future trends that will shape how a designer designs? And how can you adopt them to make your own designs more sustainable?

01. Design for disassembly

Recycling might be the feel-good sticker brands love to slap on their products. But let’s be real, so much stuff still ends up in landfill. The new wave of sustainability? Designing products to come apart like a Lego set.

Nike’s ISPA Link trainers might be the most radical example. Instead of glue, the shoes use interlocking parts that snap together, making them fully recyclable without shredding materials into oblivion. In furniture, brands like Vestre are making outdoor benches with removable, replaceable parts, so they last decades, not just until the next design trend.

A product designed to be taken apart is a product designed to last, and to be reincarnated into something else entirely.

What can you do? Think modular. Can your product be easily disassembled or upgraded instead of tossed?

02. The end of ownership

Video may have killed the radio star, but if you want to feel old understand that while millennials killed the DVD, Gen Z are killing ownership itself.

It started with music (Spotify), then movies (Netflix), then cars (Zipcar). Now, entire industries are shifting to rental and resale. Patagonia’s Worn Wear lets customers trade in old gear for store credit, giving well-worn jackets a second life. IKEA, a brand built on mass consumption, is now experimenting with furniture rental programmes in Europe and Asia. Big players in mobile phones are, if the download is true, about to change our notion of owning phones.

The future of sustainability isn’t just about what we buy. It’s about whether we even need to own things at all.

What can you do? Think circular. How do you design for reuse, rental, or resale instead of one-and-done consumption?

03. Biodesign is here

What if your shoes could grow? What if your packaging disappeared in the sink? Welcome to the bizarre, wonderful world of biodesign, a place where materials don’t just break down, they live and die on purpose.

• Mycelium packaging (grown from mushrooms) is already replacing Styrofoam in some industries.
• Lab-grown leather (made from yeast cells) is gaining traction as a cruelty-free alternative to animal hides.
• Algae-based clothing? Yep, it’s a thing. Designer Charlotte McCurdy literally made a carbon-negative raincoat out of seaweed.

We’ve spent decades trying to make indestructible materials. Now we’re designing things to biodegrade on command.

What can you do? Think biological. Could nature do it better? Materials like mycelium, algae, and lab-grown textiles are no longer sci-fi, they’re production-ready.

04. Thinking net positive

For years, sustainability has been about doing less harm, less plastic, fewer emissions, smaller footprints. But the next frontier isn’t reduction or neutrality. It’s net positive design.

Take Apple’s carbon removal projects: They’re not just offsetting emissions, they’re actively sequestering carbon from the atmosphere. In architecture, regenerative architecture is experimenting with buildings that literally grow themselves using organic materials and develop with time. Meanwhile, projects like the Great Green Wall in Africa aren’t just stopping desertification; they’re reversing it.

Zero waste is a nice idea, but it’s not enough. The next phase of sustainability is about giving more than we take.

What can you do? Think beyond zero. Neutral isn’t enough. How can your design actively improve the world rather than just “harm it less”?

What does this all mean for the humble designer?

Be humble no more. Sustainability isn’t just a corporate responsibility checklist, look at it as a design brief. And if you’re a designer, that means the job isn’t just about making things look good anymore. It’s about making them smarter, adaptable, and, ideally, beneficial to the planet.

Because in 2025, designing for sustainability isn’t a niche skill. It’s the new benchmark for good design. And the designers who get ahead of it now won’t just futureproof their careers – they’ll define what that future looks like.

Sustainability isn’t a feature anymore, it’s a fundamental. But the brands that lead won’t just be cutting emissions; they’ll be designing a future that’s actually better than the one we have now.

To find out more about award-winning design with a positive impact on the world, go behind the scenes with the winners of the Brand Impact Awards Social Impact Award - Untold by Here Design.