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Life Cycle Assessment: Principles, Practice and Prospects
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We will return to this issue below. Meanwhile, industrial design professions are not well
equipped with in-service training, and until 2007 there were no nationally available materials
in Australia to assist tertiary programs to incorporate eco-design into curricula (Centre for
Design 2007). Despite a decade or more of some form of LCA information being made availa-
ble to designers, the piecemeal nature of this information and lack of any clear and simple
means to access and use it effectively add to the reasons for low uptake of life cycle thinking
into design processes. Due to the nature of LCA as it developed in the 1980s and 1990s, with
shortages of data and controversy over allocation rules and other methodological issues, the
technique gathered a reputation for being relatively technical, expensive and limited. In many
cases, a comparison of just two product scenarios was realistic and still relatively time-con-
suming. From anecdotal evidence gathered by the authors, it would appear that many firms
involved in design and/or manufacturing still retain this image of LCA, despite its rapid devel-
opment. Accordingly, the incorporation of LCA is often considered to be a relatively unimpor-
tant niche activity.
Despite the difficulties and ill-defined market drivers, some manufacturers have embraced
LCA across a range of sectors. These include commercial furniture, mass-market electrical
consumer goods, the automotive industry and even service sectors (Gradael 1997). The devel-
opment of LCA and cleaner production techniques and processes has led to a range of resource
efficiencies in manufacturing processes, from raw materials production to fabrication of
complex consumer goods. However, in this process it is necessary to differentiate between the
use of environmental thinking during design, as in eco-design, and the (comparative) assess-
ment of environmental performance after design, as in traditional LCA. Where early interven-
tion in the conceptual design phase can be achieved, there is maximum opportunity for impact
reduction by incorporating product life cycle thinking (Lewis and Gertsakis 2001), and it is
here that potential exists for quick LCA tools to influence product design.

11.3.2 Consumers, purchasers and specifiers
Consumers exhibit complex behaviours. Many people view themselves as ‘green’ consumers,
but relatively few act consistently green, as evidenced by the market share of environmentally
preferable products and the observation that most voluntarily labelled products are not market
leaders (OECD 2005; Pedersen and Neergaard 2006). In Australia, the ‘success stories’ in
consumer choice of environmental products centre on clear, informative, independent infor-
mation about products, and issues where there has been significant media focus. For example,
Australia’s energy labelling program for white goods is widely regarded as among the most
informative and successful in the world; 94% of consumers recognise it and 88% use it in pur-
chasing (Artcraft Research 2005). The main motivation for this is mixed. Helping the environ-
ment (13%) ranks below cost savings (39%) and energy savings (38%) in this regard.
Although cost and price are important issues for consumers, they are not the only ones.
Purchases are often guided by quality or habit (Gallastegui 2002). Other key factors include
(Hemmelskamp and Brockman 1997):
s consumer satisfaction
s values
s identification
s cost
s availability
s social pressure and consumer boycotts.

Green purchasing is a complex process, given the dynamic context of diverse purchasing
situations (Manzini et al. 2006). There may be lack of information, and consumers may not

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