Page 110 - Design for Environment A Guide to Sustainable Product Development

Principles of Design for Envir onment 89

operational goals. In addition, it determines the available options for
communicating company performance to outside audiences. Once
environmental performance goals have been expressed in terms of
specific metrics (e.g. 50% solid waste reduction), the next step in
product development is to decompose these metrics into quantitative
parameters that can be estimated and tracked for a particular product
design. This process is discussed further in Chapter 7.
A variety of environmental performance measures, including eco-
efficiency metrics, are used in various industries around the world,
reflecting regional and industry-specific environmental issues. Exam-
ples of different types of metrics include toxic use measures (e.g.,
total kg of solvents purchased per unit of production), resource uti-
lization measures (e.g., total energy consumed during the product
life cycle), atmospheric emission measures (e.g., greenhouse gases
and ozone-depleting substances released per unit of production), and
waste minimization measures (e.g., percent of product materials
recovered at end-of-life), to name a few. A more exhaustive list is
provided in Chapter 7.

Design Strategies
DFE Principle 4. Maintain and apply a portfolio of systematic
design strategies.
Build upon past experiences to assemble a portfolio of design strategies that
can be codified, communicated through training, and systematically applied
by your design teams. This will encourage a repeatable and consistent
innovation process rather than anecdotal successes based on individ-
ual ingenuity. There has been a great deal of knowledge developed
worldwide about DFE strategies, including many useful design rules
and guidelines, suitable for various industries and product catego-
ries. For example, Anastas and Zimmerman published a set of gen-
eral principles for green engineering, shown in Table 6.2, which can
be applied from the micro to the macro scale [3]. Drawing upon their
work and many other sources, Chapter 8 provides a comprehensive
catalogue of DFE guidelines, organized according to the four princi-
pal DFE strategies depicted in Figure 6.3. These are:
1. Design for Dematerialization—Minimize material through-
put as well as the associated energy and resource consump-
tion at every stage of the life cycle. This can be achieved
through a variety of techniques, such as product life exten-
sion, source reduction (i.e., downsizing), process simplifica-
tion, remanufacturing, use of recycled inputs, or substitution
of services for products. Dematerialization represents the best
opportunity for decoupling economic growth from resource
consumption.