Product Management

The document outlines how product managers can drive sustainable innovation by incorporating climate criteria into product life cycles, prioritizing energy efficiency and circularity, and influencing organizational culture. It emphasizes the business case for sustainability, noting that in 2022, sustainable products accounted for at least half of recent purchases for 60% of customers.

• Product managers can integrate climate impact into the product lifecycle by using sustainability-focused KPIs (such as water usage and energy consumption), conducting product life cycle assessments (LCAs) to understand greenhouse gas emissions, and prioritizing features that enable customers to adopt sustainable behaviors.
• To reduce energy consumption and emissions, the guide recommends eliminating 'bloat'—underutilized features that waste energy in manufacturing and data centers—and designing carbon-aware products that account for the varying carbon intensity of the power grid across different times and regions.
• For physical products, the guide advocates for circularity through the implementation of take-back and recycling services, the creation of refurbished product marketplaces, and the adoption of collaborative consumption sales models to avoid planned obsolescence.
• Product managers are encouraged to expand climate impact organization-wide by incorporating climate criteria into vendor RFPs, collaborating with marketing to avoid greenwashing, and working with finance to include a 'carbon fee' (the social cost of carbon) in product pricing.

APA

Project Drawdown (n.d.). Product Management. https://drawdown.org/job-function-action-guides/product-management

Chicago

Project Drawdown. Product Management. n.d. https://drawdown.org/job-function-action-guides/product-management.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=Project Drawdown |title=Product Management |url=https://drawdown.org/job-function-action-guides/product-management |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{projectdrawdownndproduct, author = {{Project Drawdown}}, title = {{Product Management}}, institution = {Project Drawdown}, url = {https://drawdown.org/job-function-action-guides/product-management}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }