Influential companies should be leading the development of sustainable products, according to Google's vice president of hardware design Ivy Ross.
Ross said that large companies including Google have a crucial role to play in reducing global carbon emissions because they have the power to change the behaviour of other companies.
"When you're a big company, you have an obligation to be more sustainable," Ross told Dezeen. "You can push the factories to go that extra mile."
"We feel accountable because you can sit here and complain about things, but design is at the beginning," she added.
"Electronics is one of the worst offenders in terms of waste"
The amount of waste that is created from new product launches every year worries Ross. "In the tech world, electronics is one of the worst offenders in terms of waste," she said.
"I think pounds of electronics are dumped each year."
Ivy Ross spoke to Dezeen at Google's headquarters in Mountain View
One of the main ways to make the tech industry more sustainable is by focusing on making hardware that can be used for longer periods of time, according to Ross.
"It's about how do we design so you don't feel like you should or have to buy something new every year" And really making the software that changes every year and becomes helpful," she said.
Companies should develop software not new hardware, says Ross
Ross believes that focusing on software developments...