Page 16 - Design for Environment A Guide to Sustainable Product Development

Preface

Since the first edition of this book was published in 1996, the world
has experienced dramatic political and economic changes, but my
basic premise has stayed constant: environmental sustainability is
compatible with economic growth—in fact, growth is a “natural”
process. The alternative seems unacceptable, namely, stagnation and
decline of human civilizations. Yet today the challenges of climate
change and natural resource degradation are more daunting than
ever. Personally, I remain an optimist, believing that humans are
ingenious and resilient enough to overcome these challenges. How-
ever, we need to get going, sooner rather than later!
Although sustainability has become fashionable, it seems in dan-
ger of being trivialized. While recycling containers, eating local foods,
and using energy-efficient light bulbs are positive steps, the magni-
tude of the problem is much larger. Our economic systems are gener-
ating a mountain of hidden wastes and emissions that are gradually
threatening the ecological goods and services—energy, water, land,
and biological resources—needed to support our lifestyles and enable
worldwide prosperity. These environmental impacts are not just
“issues” that can be easily corrected by making products “greener”
and more “friendly.” We will need to work collectively to reinvent the
supply chain systems and infrastructure that form the basis of pro-
duction and consumption.
This book describes an important part of the solution, a field of
engineering that I have been involved with for many years, Design
for Environment (DFE). The evolution of DFE has followed the same
path as my own professional career—from analyzing environmental
risks to preventing waste and pollution at the source, from comply-
ing with regulations to integrating environmental sustainability
into enterprise strategy and decision making. You will find in these
pages a business rationale for developing sustainable products and
processes, as well as a comprehensive toolkit for corporations to
practice DFE in the context of product life-cycle management. Per-
haps most interesting, you will find a series of examples drawn
from actual case histories of innovative companies that have applied

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