Product ecodesign and materials: current status and future prospects

TL;DR

This paper reviews the current state of ecodesign practices in industry, highlighting challenges in integrating environmental considerations into product development and discussing future prospects for more effective sustainable design approaches.

Contribution

It provides an overview of existing ecodesign tools, analyzes their limitations, and discusses the transition towards Integrated Design for more sustainable product development.

Findings

Ecodesign tools are rarely integrated into routine industry practices.

Current tools are not well adapted to designers' needs and skills.

The field is moving towards Integrated Design to incorporate multiple perspectives.

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to discuss the current status of ecodesign in the industry and its future implications for materials. There is today more and more focus on the environmental impacts of products during their whole life cycle. In particular, ecodesign aims at integrating environmental aspects during the product's design process as any other criterion, in order to reduce the life cycle impacts. Although a lot of product environmental impact assessment and Design for Environment tools already exist, environmental aspects are unfortunately rarely routinely integrated into product development process in the industry. This is mainly due to the fact that current ecodesign tools are little adapted to designers' practices, requirements and competencies. After the sequential and DfX paradigms, design of products is today maturing into Integrated Design, where multiple points of views and expertise have to be considered at the same time to progressively define the product.