Page 192 - Design for Environment A Guide to Sustainable Product Development

Analysis Methods for Design Decisions 171

Vegetable-tanned leather, • Materials with moderate
cold galvanized metal, ethyl hazards in life cycle, but no
0 vinyl acetate (EVA), conven- carcinogens
tional wool, polypropylene, • Virgin/recycled content
polyethylene (LDPE, HDPE,
• Moderate ecosystem impacts
LLDPE)
Nylon, Delrin (high • Materials with moderate
®
molecular weight acetal, hazards in life cycle, but
also known as polyacetal, no carcinogens
polyoxymethylene, or • Minimal recycled content
_ polyformaldehyde), con-
1 • Moderate ecosystem
ventional cotton, polyester,
impacts
plated metals (non-nickel,
non-chrome), wood
products—non-sustainably
harvested
Chrome III (Cr3+)-tanned • Materials with significant
leather, stainless steel hazards in life cycle, but
_ (300), PU and PU foam, no carcinogens
2 Teflon/PTFE, spandex and • Virgin content
spandex blends
• Significant ecosystem
impacts
PVC and PVC coatings, • Materials with extreme
nickel and nickel plate, hazards (endocrine disrupters,
chrome plate, chrome VI carcinogens, high-level acute
_ (Cr6+)-tanned leather, PU toxicity, etc.) in life cycle
3 coatings (waterproof/ • Virgin content
breathable) • Not biodegradable or
recyclable
• Extreme ecosystem impacts

TABLE 9.2 Sustainability Scorecard for Material Selection: Soft Goods in
Footwear Design (continued)

One popular approach that employs such matrices is Quality Func-
tion Deployment (QFD), which uses a “house of quality” model to
make explicit the relationships between customer desires and product
design parameters. This is essentially a matrix whose rows represent
desirable properties of the product and whose columns represent con-
trollable and measurable parameters of the design; interactions be -
tween these parameters can be represented in the “roof” of the house.
The QFD analysis can be performed recursively by further analyzing
and dissecting each of these parameters. A number of computer-based
tools are available for creating, displaying, and printing QFD matrices.