ECODESIGN Implementation: A Systematic Guidance on Integrating Environmental Considerations into Product Development

149 Pages·2004·3.496 MB·English

by  Wolfgang Wimmer, Rainer Züst, Kun-Mo Lee (auth.)

ECODESIGN Implementation
ALLIANCE FOR GLOBAL SUSTAINABILITY BOOKSERIES
SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY: TOOLS FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
VOLUME 6
Series Editor: Dr. Joanne M. Kauffman
Laboratory for Energy and the Environment
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
1 Amherst St., Room E40-453
Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139 USA
[email protected]
Series Advisory Board:
Dr. John H. Gibbons
President, Resource Strategies, The Plains, VA, USA
Professor Atsushi Koma
Vice President, University of Tokyo, Japan
Professor Hiroshi Komiyama
University of Tokyo, Japan
Professor David H. Marks
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA
Professor Mario Molina
Massachusetts Insitute of Technology, USA
Dr. Rajendra Pachauri
Director, Tata Energy Research Institute, India
Professor Roland Scholz
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zürich, Switzerland
Dr. Ellen Stechel
Manager, Environmental Programs, Ford Motor Co., USA
Professor Dr. Peter Edwards
Department of Environmental Sciences, Geobotanical Institute, Switzerland
Dr. Julia Carabias
Instituto de Ecología, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, México
Aims and Scope of the Series
The aim of this series is to provide timely accounts by authoritative scholars of the results of
cutting edge research into emerging barriers to sustainable development, and methodologies
and tools to help governments, industry, and civil society overcome them. The work presented
in the series will draw mainly on results of the research being carried out in the Alliance for
Global Sustainability (AGS).
The level of presentation is for graduate students in natural, social and engineering sciences as
well as policy and decision-makers around the world in government, industry and civil society.
ECODESIGN Implementation
A Systematic Guidance on Integrating Environmental
Considerations into Product Development
By
Wolfgang Wimmer
Technische Universität Wien,
Vienna, Austria
Rainer Züst
ETH Zürich,
Switzerland
and
Kun-Mo Lee
Ajou University,
Suwon, South Korea
A C.I.P. Catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-90-481-6784-5 ISBN 978-1-4020-3071-0 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-4020-3071-0
Printed on acid-free paper
springeronline.com
All Rights Reserved
©2004 SpringerScience+Business Media Dordrecht
Originally published by Springer in 2004
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2004
No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted
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A G S
LLIANCE FOR LOBAL USTAINABILITY
An International Partnership
Alliance for Global Sustainability
International Advisory Board
Interim Chairman:
Mr. Livio D. DeSimone, Chairman of the Board and CEO, 3M (Retired)
AGSUniversity Presidents:
Prof. Olaf Kübler, President, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zürich
Prof. Takeshi Sasaki, President, University of Tokyo
Prof. Jan-Eric Sundgren, President, Chalmers University of Technology
Dr. Charles M. Vest, President, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Members:
Dr. Markus Bayegan, Technology and Research Director, ABB Ltd
Dr. Thomas Conelly, Chief Science and Technology Officer, DuPont
The Hon. President José-María Figueres Olsen, Managing Director, World Economic
Forum
Mr. Hiroaki Fujii, President, The Japan Foundation
Mr. Hiroyuki Fujimura, Chairman of the Board, Ebara Corporation
Mr. Lars Kann-Rasmussen, Director, VKR Holding A/S
Dr. Jill Ker Conway, Chairman, Lend Lease Corporation
Mr. Masatake Matsuda, Chairman, East Japan Railway Company
Mr. Nobuya Minami, President, Tokyo Electric Power Company, Inc.
Mr. Norio Wada, President, Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT)
Prof. Jakob Nüesch, Member, International Committee of the Red Cross
Mr. Dan Sten Olsson, CEO, Stena AB
Dr. Fred Palensky, Executive Vice President, 3M
Mr. Tei-ichi Sato, Director General, The Japan Society for the Promotion of Science
Sir Nicholas V. (Nick) Scheele, Chief Operating Officer and Director, Ford Motor
Company
Dr. Stephan Schmidheiny, President, Avina Foundation
Prof. Francis Waldvogel, President, ETH Board, Switzerland
Dr. Margot Wallström, Member of the European Commission
Prof. Hiroyuki Yoshikawa, President, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science
and Technology
Dr. Hans-Rudolf Zulliger, CEO, Gretag AG
Contents
Preface xi
Introduction xiii
1 Product Modeling 1
1.1 Introduction 2
1.2 General principles 4
1.2.1 Systems Thinking 4
1.2.2 Heuristic principles 6
1.3 Qualitative description 9
1.3.1 General description of the product 10
1.3.2 Life cycle model 11
1.3.3 Environmental parameters 12
1.3.4 People’s involvement 13
1.3.5 Possible accidents and defects 14
1.4 Quantitative modeling 15
2 Life Cycle Assessment 19
2.1 Introduction to Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) 20
2.2 General principles of LCA 23
2.3 Life Cycle Assessment in detail 30
2.3.1 Goal and scope definition 32
2.3.2 Life cycle inventory analysis 37
2.3.3 Life cycle impact assessment 47
2.3.4 Life cycle interpretation 52
2.4 Optional elements of LCA 54
2.4.1 Normalization 55
2.4.2 Weighting 56
2.4.3 Evaluation of reliability of the LCA results 59
2.4.4 Report of the LCA results 61
2.5 Summary 61
vii
viii
3 ECODESIGNTasks 63
3.1 Introduction 64
3.2 Stakeholder requirements 66
3.2.1 Type of stakeholders 66
3.2.2 End user requirements 67
3.2.3 B2B customer requirements 68
3.2.4 Requirements from environmental directives
and regulations 68
3.2.5 Requirements from eco-labels 70
3.2.6 General requirements from standards 72
3.2.7 Summarizing stakeholder requirements 73
3.3 Environmental Quality Function Deployment 73
3.4 Environmental benchmarking 77
3.5 Environmental aspects with the ECODESIGN
PILOT’s Assistant 81
3.6 Environmental aspects through interpretation of
Life Cycle Assessment results 89
3.7 Applying the ECODESIGN PILOT 93
3.7.1 Deriving ECODESIGN PILOT’s improvement
strategies 95
3.7.2 Identifying ECODESIGN measures with the
ECODESIGN PILOT’s checklists 97
3.7.3 Summarizing the ECODESIGN tasks 103
4 Product Improvement 105
4.1 Introduction 106
4.2 Product specifications 107
4.3 Functional structure 109
4.4 Creativity sessions 112
4.4.1 Creativity techniques 112
4.4.2 Patent search 113
4.5 Product concept 115
4.5.1 Combining variants 117
4.5.2 Evaluating concept variants against
assessment criteria 117
4.6 Embodiment design 118
5 Environmental Communication 121
5.1 Introduction to environmental communication 122
5.1.1 Eco-label 122
5.1.2 Self-declared environmental claims 123
5.1.3 Environmental product declaration 124
5.1.4 Comparison of the three environmental label types 124
xi
5.2 Environmental product declaration in detail 126
5.2.1 Who are the target audiences? 126
5.2.2 How to develop an environmental product declaration? 127
5.3 Summary 135
6. Conclusion 137
References 139
PREFACE
Environmentally sound product design,in short ECODESIGN,is at the same time a
key success factor for industry as well as a necessity. Low material and energy input
over the entire life cycle of a product and an optimized environmental performance is
of central importance to fulfill recent and future requirements. Innovative solutions,
which are characterized by a better life cycle performance,should be the result of a
systematic ECODESIGN process. The basis of a successful ECODESIGN process is
a comprehensive analysis of the given situation. It’s of central importance to under-
stand a specific situation from an environmental viewpoint for developing specific
improvement strategies and measures.
The ECODESIGN PILOT provides a methodology to define successful improve-
ment strategies and measures in a multidisciplinary working team. This methodology
was already published by Kluwer Academic Publishers (Wimmer, W., Züst, R.:
“ECODESIGN-Pilot – Product-Investigation- Learning- and Optimisation-Tool”,
Kluwer Academic Publishers,Amsterdam,2002.). The online version is available on:
www.ecodesign.at/pilot. Both methods, the book with the CD-ROM and the web
page,have been recognized as helpful tools in the area of ECODESIGN.
Wolfgang Wimmer from the Vienna University of Technology (TU Wien),Rainer
Züst from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zürich),and Kun-Mo Lee
from the Ajou University (Korea), have used the ECODESIGN PILOT in projects
with industry in Europe and Asia in the last three years. In addition interested experts
and students from different universities have been trained in using this methodology.
The experiences have clearly shown that the PILOT is a good instrument to define
specific improvement measures. But the ECODESIGN PILOT has to be integrated in
an overall product improvement process.
This book provides a systematic integration of significant environmental aspects
and stakeholder requirements as well as the environmental communication of the
ECODESIGN results.
We would like to thank all those who have supported us in writing this book. We
are especially indebted to the Alliance for Global Sustainability for their support in
publishing the book. We also thank our colleagues from industry and academia for the
interesting discussion and ideas to improve the ECODESIGN process. Last but not
least,we want to express our deep gratitude to friends and families for their encour-
agement and understanding,especially in the final phase of this book project.
Wolfgang Wimmer,Vienna (Austria)
Rainer Züst,Seegräben (Switzerland)
Kun-Mo Lee,Suwon (Korea)
June 2004
xi
INTRODUCTION
The systematic improvement of the environmental performance of industrial products
and services is no longer a sophisticated issue or luxury. Environmentally oriented solu-
tions are core elements of good governance and good business. An integrated approach
for that is necessary. And that would mean that the environmental dimension has to be
an integral part of all planning and decision-making processes within a company.
Environmentally sound product design,short ECODESIGN,has a great potential
to improve the environmental performance of a product while extending the cus-
tomers benefit as well as improving the economic performance. That’s one of the
most important reasons why industry should be more and more interested in effective
methods and tools for implementing ECODESIGN.
Most important when improving a current situation is to initiate a culture of inno-
vative thinking, and to encourage product designers and project managers finding
new and more attractive solutions. This implies that designers should have the knowl-
edge and ability to apply methods and tools in a multidisciplinary working team by
integrating relevant stakeholder requirements,considering global,regional and local
mechanisms,as well as doing a systematic and broad analysis of a given situation to
achieve a better environmental performance of their products.
It is of central importance for the industry to produce excellent products and to
provide best services. All products and services have to be improved continually in an
innovative way. That is the basis of successful business. And one key issue in this con-
text is certainly anticipating trends. Followings are several significant trends from an
environmental view:
• Customers and society are increasingly expecting products and services that are
environmentally optimized. They would like to have more than a face-lifting.
They are really interested in innovative solutions. These improvements are
communicated by an increasing number of companies with eco-labels or other
easy to understand information.
• The number of laws and directives related to environmental issues are increas-
ing continually. It is important to realize the new requirements from relevant
regulations (e.g. new environmental directives in the electronic sector).
• Competitors are offering more and more products with specific environmental
benefits. They communicate these products and services through environmen-
tally oriented labels or with the information that the customers and the society
will have certain benefits.
xiii