Sustainable Innovation: How Design Businesses Can Innovate For Sustainability in 2025

Business innovation isn’t always sustainable innovation. Sometimes being inventive in your business models can actively harm the environment.

Take aluminium Nespresso pods as an example (the ones with the stunning Social Media and TV ads featuring George Clooney). Initially, Nespresso and other pods were extremely harmful to the planet.

However, the businesses involved in pod production boomed. After environmental supporters showed their disgust, the companies began an initiative to recycle these pods, to ensure they don't end up as waste in landfills. These days, you can follow George Clooney’s example and still be sustainable! That’s a great example of sustainable innovation!

What is Sustainable Innovation?

Sustainable innovation ideas involve protecting the environment in every aspect of your business or service. You should be aware of the impact your business has on the environment. This includes the climate and the planet in general. The aim is to be sustainable without affecting your bottom line.

Innovate with Sustainable Action

The United Nations compiled 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). These goals call on global countries to better the lives of their citizens on a social, economic and sustainable level. 

They spell out the following:

• Think about the triple bottom line – people, planet and profit. Think about being sustainable and how you can do this to profit your business. You should ensure your business considers sustainabilitywhenever it manufactures products. And you must ensure you look after the people working for your business.

• Methods you use to create your products and every service to make a profit without harming the global environment. Here's another example: British organisation Bio-bean is involved in biofuel production. They manufacture these sustainable products out of caffeine scraps. They currently use this to fuel London’s double-decker buses. The business is also involved in green fuel item production, products created out of pod scraps; they use these to replace carbon heavy logs and coal bricks. We love how this British business approaches sustainable innovation.

• Not everyone knows how to use innovation. But we can change how we do business to ensure we are more sustainable.

Think hard about how to adopt sustainable measures in every aspect of your small business. Consider everything from human resources and marketing to design and production.

Adding Sustainable Innovations to Your Business

A business open to sustainable innovation processes isn’t a quick fix. Sustainability involves a framework, a long-term goal that takes time and commitment. And you don’t need a university degree to achieve this.

1. Sustainable Innovation in Manufacture 

Innovations don’t necessarily mean changing how you manufacture your existing products or offer your services. It’s about manufacturing your products in a more efficient way that also uses less energy and water and making your services more sustainable as well. At maake, we print on fabric in the most sustainable way possible, using less energy and little soaking. Our printing processes use 95% less power than traditional textile printing, and we use only 100% sustainable power sources. That’s sustainable innovation for us.

We also print on demand, which means we only print what you order. The sustainability processes we use to print on cotton and linen use no liquid and produce less than a thimbleful of ink surplus per 100m printed. In addition, all the inks we use meet the Oeko-Tex 100 Class 1 and GOTS 5.0 requirements and are also EN71-13 certified safe for children. (You can read about these fabric certifications in our comprehensive Textile Certification Guide.)

We also focus on our maakeLess Fabric Waste Initiative, which involves recycling cut-off fabrics, or printed textiles returned to us. All leftover material is given to charities, universities and schools, and some are recycled and offered free to customers in upcycling bags of various sizes. If you collect your bag from our North London mill, it’s completely free. If we deliver to you, the delivery costs are for your account.

2. Sustainability All the Time

Sometimes all you need to do to become more sustainable is find more sustainable ways to do what you already do. Learn about the production processes we use the sustainability of our products in the section above. Otherwise, try using your initiative and start creating more sustainable products.

3. Teamwork & Innovation

Companies team with other businesses for sustainability – to create a more positive impact on the environment. Say you work with another business, as we work with different fabric manufacturers – together you can make more of a sustainable impact.

Hopefully, we have inspired you to make your business more sustainable. The goal is to reduce carbon emissions; we do this by suggesting that customers collect their orders from our North London mill instead of having us deliver them. And try to minimise fabric and ink surplus in every possible way.

4. Innovation With the Circular Economy

We have learned that many a business had a linear approach in the past. This approach involves manufacturing products to make a profit. Usually, factories make products with a certain life cycle (take Apple products for example, which change every year). Once the products are past their sell-by date, they are discarded and replaced with newer models. 

This isn’t a very sustainable way of doing business. 

But there is another way, one geared towards sustainability. The cyclical business process is more sustainable: it aims to reduce waste; it doesn’t create them. It’s not just recycling products – it’s a whole new way of designing goods so that we can reuse the components.

To do business sustainably, we need a circular economy. This business method involves not wasting liquid and power in manufacturing products and not creating pollution. In this economy, factories are in competition to reduce surplus products and pollution by designing products more effectively and sustainably. 

Sustainable Innovation in a Digital World

As most of maake's customers’ businesses are involved in digital design processes, we want to connect and discuss sustainable innovations in this global industry. Use your computer or social media app to sign up for a course offered by LinkedIn Learning that covers digital designing in detail, featuring courses with all the tools, resources, and methods for sustainable design you need to innovate. 

It covers the following:

• Sustainable Design: Methods we use to create goods with sustainability innovation in mind, including the application of recycled materials, natural resources and less power to produce them.
• Eco Design: Designing goods that are more sustainable themselves.
• Sustainable Product Design: Using the Triple Bottom Line when designing products. This involves contributing to global well-being and environmental health in 3 important categories – people, planet, and prosperity.
• Design for Sustainability: Involves the business being sustainable; not just its products and services.

Sustainability & Innovation in the Fashion Industry

We’ve covered Fast Fashion before, but now it’s time to discuss global fashion sustainability processes in more detail.

• Fast fashion involves non sustainable innovation products and it’s here to stay. More and more manufacturers are manufacturing quick, cheap clothing the moment Social Media shows a new trend. Then, when another fashion trend emerges, we discard the previous fast fashion garments as waste in landfills.
• Remember: fast fashion clothing is not biodegradable. Manufacturers usually make this garment from synthetic fabrics, which does not involve sustainable production, as each product doesn’t need to last long.

Regular synthetic material manufacturing uses plenty of power and liquid, which impacts the environment. And manufacturing these garments also involves using microplastics and other scrap materials.

• The only way to combat this is to innovate and manufacture ‘slow fashion’ on a global level. Check out our Guide to Slow Fashion, which explains all about slow fashion garments, and quality clothing made from recycled or natural fabrics. These garments have classic designs that withstand the test of time.

Not only are they of exceptional quality, but they are also classic, timeless designs that factories manufacture sustainably.

• Part of the problem with ‘fast fashion’ is the mistreatment of garment workers. This includes the awful conditions in which they work.

Every business must provide sustainable working conditions and reasonable working hours. In the fast fashion industry, garment workers receive low pay, work impossible hours, and often work in unhealthy conditions.

• Here is some good news: international countries are making laws about sustainable manufacturing. This includes ensuring fashion businesses save power and liquids when they produce clothing.

Innovation in Business Products

Follow our lead and go green in every possible way using sustainable innovations like the ones listed below. Here is a list of 8 ways we engage in sustainable innovation at maake:

1. Embrace being sustainable: At our North London factory, all products are designed, printed, manufactured, and delivered in the most sustainable way.
2. Make it British: We only use fabrics and designs that are locally sourced.
3. Give the staff the best: Our staff enjoy good working conditions and are paid salaries that meet the Living Wage. They undergo extensive training to learn about the company’s sustainable textile printing and fabric production.
4. Create a sustainable culture: Employees are creative and focused; they believe in our philosophy of pioneering sustainability.
5. MakeLess Waste: At maake, we have a Zero Waste policy regarding our products. Also, management has adapted our printing machines to have cut-off switches lessen the amount of power we use.
6. Recycle: As mentioned above, we give offcuts and leftover fabrics a second life. The Zero to Landfill initiative created by maake management involves donating any leftover fabric to worthy institutions. Or customers can pick up upcycling bags of different sizes completely free of charge, or pay only for delivery. At the factory, we fill these bags with white, ivory and natural-coloured fabric offcuts, including organic cottons, linens and velvets and recycled polyester materials.

7. Manufacture every product with sustainability in mind: In our business, we sustainably print on fabrics with sustainable inks that are also safe for children. Although fabric printing processes can use plenty of liquid and energy, and create scraps, our printing methods don’t. Instead, our methods minimise our impact on the environment.

8. Create every product on demand: We produce and print exactly what our customers order, no more.

Innovate as we do in the UK

These sustainable innovation programmes can make your business more driven towards being sustainable.

The SBRI & the SIF Assist Small Businesses with Innovation

To assist companies in Britain to innovate and become more sustainable, the country’s Small Business Research Initiative (SBRI) was formed. It assists government departments by communicating with British companies and helping them solve challenges such as environmental issues.

This pre-commercial procurement programme uses studies to assist a business with a sustainable innovation project and show them how to produce every new product using sustainable innovation. It also generates new business opportunities for small businesses.

To help these companies with finance, the SBRI formed the Sustainable Innovation Fund (SIF) to encourage and support inventive business insights that positively impact climate change and environmental sustainability.

The funding programme focuses on “a prosperous, resilient, and equitable future based on net zero technologies”. It aims to support sustainable innovation and technology in business to better public service. The SIF is assisting the future of gas and electricity networks with funds from Ofgem by investing around £450 million in power network sustainable innovation by 2026.

Innovation Takes Over Fashion & Textiles 

In the past year, UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) has invested £6 million to help the fashion and textile industry consider sustainability and responsible practices and lessen their environmental impact. The reason for this action? “Fashion uses more power than both aviation and shipping combined”.

According to Professor Peter Liss, Interim Executive Chair of the Natural Environment Research Council, which is part of UKRI, “The fashion industry makes a significant contribution to Britain. This also impacts the environment, including using liquid resources and causing emissions of greenhouse gases. We need to understand the true impact better.”

These sustainable innovation initiatives bring together researchers and industry experts in science and fashion to embed being sustainable in the fashion and textile industry.

UKRI has funded 3 different but complimentary research projects that work with industry experts, business management and other stakeholders to “build information, support the industry sector and adopt sustainable business models”:

1. The Back to Baselines In Circular Fashion & Textiles Network:

Led by the University of Leeds, it aims to analyse the current status of sustainability practices in the industry.

2. The Future Fibres Network:

“To embed environmental sciences at the heart of fashion, wider apparel and textile sectors, and establish systematic, circular and sustainable principles”.

3. The IMPACT+ Network:

In conjunction with Northumbria University, this project aims to assemble a cross-disciplinary team “to improve the collation, analysis, and assessment of data to advance the reliability and authenticity of environmental impact measures”.

Energy in the Right Place

At maake, we care about our customers. We know your business is trying to make ends meet. We have experienced what you are going through, which is why we understand. And that’s why we offer advice on making your enterprise more successful using blogs like this one. Visit our website and see how we can help your business further, with our products and service offerings.