6.1 Introduction -- Mar. '98
The choices which designers make during the development of a new or improved product will have an influence on environmental impacts during each stage of the product's life cycle - from acquiring materials to manufacturing, use, reuse, and ultimately to the product's final disposal. There is a need for designers to evaluate the total life cycle of a product through utilizing concepts such as life cycle assessment, risk assessment, risk management and other means.
The task of making products more environmentally acceptable introduces some challenging obstacles for designers. Traditional considerations such as product performance, manufacturing costs, and product liability have to be balanced with environmental objectives such as minimizing resource depletion, increasing energy efficiency and recyclability, and the management of risks associated with hazardous or harmful environmental releases. Failure to be environmentally responsible may result in a loss of natural resources and decreased biodiversity, degradation of water and air quality, and loss of reusable and recyclable materials
The design professional may help to overcome these failures, and indeed has a greater opportunity than many others to change things for the better. Designers may evaluate the environmental performance of their products and propose solutions to environmental concerns, or they may help synthesize the improvements which include environmental concerns among all the other design objectives. The practice of formally carrying out this design improvement process is Design for the Environment (DfE).
DfE is a process which helps to evaluate and provide insights on environmental improvement opportunities for specified design options. However, DfE does not provide specific guidance on the establishment of design options. Design options are developed in response to the broader set of performance requirements and objectives. It integrates environmental criteria with the usual design drivers of performance, cost, quality, cultural, legal, and technical criteria. DfE includes environmental considerations at the outset in defining the task and specification for products. It uses life cycle concepts coupled with some core considerations or principles aimed at reducing the environmental impacts generated in the life cycle of a product. DfE identifies and evaluates environmental interactions with pragmatic checklists which serve to highlight opportunities for optimized product design. (Checklists are not the only tools to achieve DfE and other means may be used to arrive to the same objective.)
DfE may be used for:
a) new designs that are innovative solutions to previous or new requirements;
b) new features to be incorporated in the next generation of existing products; and
c) incremental improvements or modifications to existing products.
The design changes may be intended to affect any one or more stages of the life cycle of the product, and for incremental and continual improvements leading to minimization of environmental burdens.
Next: 6.2 DfE Conceptual Framework
Nickel & Its Uses
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