Page 205 - Design for Environment A Guide to Sustainable Product Development

Analysis Methods for Design Decisions 183

FIGURE 9.4 Life-cycle comparison of automotive fuels.

However, as seen in Chapter 8, environmental performance is often
closely connected with other factors. Sometimes there are synergies,
e.g., decreasing waste may result in lower costs; and sometimes there
are compromises, e.g., increasing durability may interfere with recy-
clability. As mentioned above, scoring matrices provide a qualitative
means of analyzing these trade-offs.
To fully understand complex trade-offs may require the develop-
ment of predictive simulation models that capture the interactions
among different design parameters. Detailed simulations can be
extremely labor intensive, e.g., Gaussian plume dispersion models
for airborne releases from production facilities. Only under excep-
tional circumstances would such tools be used for product and pro-
cess development purposes. Nevertheless, with increased computing
power, it is now possible to embed simulations into computer-aided
design toolkits so that engineers can test new designs for compli-
ance with important environmental constraints. One example of
such a tool, still under development, is the Multiscale Integrated
Models of Ecosystem Services (MIMES) system developed by Rob-
ert Costanza and his colleagues at the University of Vermont. This is
a suite of dynamic ecological-economic computer models specifi-
cally aimed at understanding the impact of industrial activities on
ecosystem services and human well-being.

Example: The Millennium Institute, a nonprofit based in Washington, D.C., has
developed a sophisticated policy simulation tool called Threshold 21 (T21). The
tool combines inputs from more detailed models to examine the interactions