Page 30 - Design for Environment A Guide to Sustainable Product Development

Intr oduction 9

product life cycle. Since environmental performance is an important
aspect of total quality, DFE fits naturally into this proc ess—in fact,
life-cycle thinking is at the core of DFE.

Sustainable development is industrial progress that “meets the needs
of the present without compromising the ability of future generations
to meet their own needs” [8]. The implied challenge is how to assure
continued industrial growth without adverse ecological and social
impacts. To address this challenge, the traditional economic concept
of exchange value must be extended to include both man-made
and natural capital (see Figure 1.4). Instead of accounting purely for
the labor and man-made materials that are inputs to production, the
broader approach of ecological economics takes into account the value
of natural resource inputs and the effect of waste outputs [9]. Sus-
tainability has recently emerged as a prominent global issue due to
concerns about shrinking fossil fuel reserves and evidence of global
warming. As mentioned above, climate change is just one of many
sustainability issues that need to be considered in a broader systems
view of economic development.

Historically, the issues addressed in DFE were managed by envi-
ronmental, health and safety (EH&S) groups that tended to be isolated
from the mainstream in terms of both the strategic and the operational
aspects of a business. However, the role and positioning of EH&S
groups have shifted, and sustainability issues that were previously
considered esoteric have been incorporated into a comprehensive
business strategy. The emergence of DFE has resulted in active
collaboration among company groups that rarely had contact in the
past—environmental managers and product development managers.

FIGURE 1.4 Broadening traditional economics to include natural capital
(adapted from [9]).