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This paper introduces a new distance learning course, “Working with our environment: technology for a sustainable future”. An inter‐disciplinary team within the Technology Faculty of the Open University developed this undergraduate course, which enrols over 1,500 students per year. One of the overall course aims is to help students understand how the use of technology to meet human material needs contributes to environmental effects. The process of producing this course, its philosophy, aims and design will be briefly discussed. At the start of the course a lifestyle environmental assessment activity, called EcoCal, is integrated within students’ study materials. The activity enables students to assess the main impacts on the environment arising from their own households’ consumption of transport, energy, food and water and production of waste. Through the use either of a printed questionnaire or publicly available software students can calculate their “ecological footprints” and then consider and model the effects of changes to their lifestyles. Through the combination of undertaking this activity and submitting an appropriate assignment, students are encouraged to think critically and creatively about their personal and household impacts on the environment and how these might be reduced. At the end of the course students are surveyed to explore whether their attitudes and behaviour have changed.

This paper aims to summarise the methods and main findings of a study of the environmental impacts of providing higher education (HE) courses by campus‐based and distance/open‐learning methods.

The approach takes the form of an environmental audit, with data from surveys of 20 UK courses – 13 campus‐based, seven print‐based and online distance learning courses – covering travel, paper and print consumption, computing, accommodation, and campus site impacts. Results were converted into energy and CO₂ emissions per student per 100 hours of degree study.

Distance learning HE courses involve 87 per cent less energy and 85 per cent lower CO₂ emissions than the full‐time campus‐based courses. Part‐time campus HE courses reduce energy and CO₂ emissions by 65 and 61 per cent, respectively, compared with full‐time campus courses. The lower impacts of part‐time and distance compared with full‐time campus courses is mainly due to a reduction in student travel and elimination of much energy consumption of students' housing, plus economies in campus site utilisation. E‐learning appears to offer only relatively small energy and emissions reductions (20 and 12 per cent, respectively) compared with mainly print‐based distance learning courses, mainly because online learning requires more energy for computing and paper for printing.

Assumptions were made in order to calculate the energy and emissions arising from the different HE systems. For example, it was decided to include all the energy consumed in term‐time accommodation for full‐time campus students while part‐time campus and distance learning students live at home, only requiring additional heating and lighting for study. Future studies could include more distance and blended learning courses offered by institutions other than the UK Open University and impacts other than CO₂ emissions.

Existing HE sustainability programmes should be broadened beyond considering campus site impacts and “greening the curriculum”. Indeed, were HE expansion to take environmental impacts seriously, then part‐time and distance education should be prioritised over increasing full‐time provision. This appears compatible with the Leitch Review of Skills on continuing education and training for the UK workforce.

The paper represents the only existing quantitative study of this issue.

Every organisation invests in design to create and develop distinctive products and services. The development of a coherent design and marketing philosophy is essential to the achievement of a longer‐term competitive edge. However the marketing literature hardly refers to design and where it does so there is a great deal of confusion as to what design means. Design is taken to encompass styling, fashion and product development and innovation. Key findings of a major study recently undertaken by the Design Innovation Group (DIG) are reported here. The research investigated the risks and rewards of investment in design by British companies participating in the Department of Trade and Industry/Design Council′s Funded Consultancy Scheme and subsequent Support for Design Programme. The study showed that investment in design does pay. But design effort could be more fully exploited if marketing practitioners as well as other managers acquired design management skills.

A new hand‐held Mini Hygrometer, capable of measuring concentrations of water vapour as low as 1 part per million in “dry” air and gas supplies, is now being manufactured and marketed by Offshore Electronics Ltd. of St. Peter Port, Guernsey, Channel Islands. The new batter‐powered instrument (see photograph) measures only 130 × 65 × 35mm (5.2 × 2.5 × 1.3 in)—a fraction of the size of earlier models.

The new Mastersizer X, recently launched by Malvern Instruments, is an extended specification version of its Mastersize family of laser diffraction particle size analysers.

New plastics plants. ICI plans to construct three new chemical plants at its Rozenburg Works, near Rotterdam, at a total cost of over £10 million. The plants will make nylon‐66 polymer, poly‐ethylene and Melinex polyester film. Demand for these products in European markets is expanding rapidly, but the tariffs against them are high. By producing at Rozenburg the Company aims to secure a larger share of the growing EEC market.