Engineering 2503 Introduction

Winter 2005 • Society generates and consumes such a large

Engineering Design: Introduction to Product Design
and Development
Week 10
Design for the Environment (DFE)
Dr. Leonard M. Lye, PEng
Prof. Andy Fisher, PEng
Eng 2503
fraction of the Earth’s resources that we must
consider our impact on the environment in our
technical decision making.
• A growth area for society, engineering, and
design is to simply maintain the standard of
technological living we now enjoy into the next
centuries, but at a sustainable level of low
environmental impact.
• Design for the environment (DFE) is a product
design approach for reducing the impact of
products on the environment.
1 Eng 2503 2

Impacts
Stages of a product life cycle
• Products can have adverse impact on the
environment during their manufacture through the
use of highly polluting processes and the
consumption of large quantities of raw materials.
• They can also have adverse impact through the
consumption of large amounts of energy and long
half- lives during disposal.
• Because of these issues, one must consider a
product’s entire life
- cycle, from creation through
use through disposal.

Eng 2503 3 Eng 2503 4

1
 Product Life Cycle
Life Cycle Stage
• In a product’s life cycle, there are many
events of creating pollution and many
opportunities for recycling, remanufacturing,
reuse, and reducing environmental impact.
• Merely designing a product to use non-toxic
materials is not enough. As product
designers, we must bring all our ingenuity to
bear on the challenging problem of creating
efficient products.
Eng 2503 5 Eng 2503 6

Life Cycle Typical material and energy flow over a product life cycle

• To meet this challenge, we must understand the

idea of life cycle assessment that adopts a
holistic view by analyzing the entire life cycle of a
product, process, package, material, or activity.
Life cycle stages encompass extraction and
processing of raw materials; manufacturing,
transportation, and distribution;
use/reuse/maintenance; recycling and
composting; and final disposition.

Eng 2503 7 Eng 2503 8

2
 Why DFE?
• DFE is an important activity for a design team
because environmental damage is, as are most
things, greatly influenced in the early design
phases.
• About 80% of the environmental damage of a
product is established after 20% of the design
activity is complete.
• From a business point of view, DFE is important
because customers are demanding products with
less environmental impact.
Eng 2503 9 Eng 2503
Environmental Objectives
• There are many guidelines developed to help
industry understand and deal with its impact on the
environment.
• For example, the Valdez Principles (Financial
Times, 27 March 1991), later adopted by the
Coalition for Environmentally Responsible
Economies (CERES) as the CERES Principles,
establishes objectives and guidelines to help
companies maintain good environmental
performance.
• These principles were later adopted by hundreds of
companies including Exxon, ITT, GM, and many
others.
Eng 2503 11
• Creating a product that impacts the environment
less is a market advantage. Customers now
demand it.
• For example, Xerox has set a commitment to be
a waste- free company; as a part of its operations
and its products, it will generate no waste
material that cannot be recycled or
remanufactured.
• Government agencies are also being asked by
their constituents to develop and enforce reduced
environmental impact standards for products.
• Such regulatory pressure will only grow in future.
10
CERES Principles
1. Protect the Biosphere: minimize the release of
pollutants that endanger the earth.
2. Sustainable use of resources: use raw
materials at a level where they can be
sustained.
3. Reduction and disposal of waste: Minimize
waste where possible. If unavoidable, recycle
the waste.
4. Wise use of energy: use environmentally safe
energy and invest in energy conservation.
5. Risk reduction: minimize health risk to
employees and the community.
Eng 2503 12
3
 CERES Principles (cont)
6. Marketing of safe products and services: sell products
that minimize environmental impact and are safe for
consumers.
7. Damage compensation: take responsibility through
cleanup and compensation for environmental harm.
8. Disclosure: disclose to employees and the community
incidents that cause environmental harm or pose health
and safety hazards.
9. Environmental Directors: At least one member of a
company’s board will be qualified to represent
environmental interests, and a senior executive for
environmental affairs will be appointed.
10. Annual audit: conduct annual self-evaluations of
progress in implementing these principles and make
results of independent audits available to the public.
Eng 2503
Global Issues
• Climate change – is a concern over the probable
consequences of possible large scale changes in
the Earth’s climate due to increases in
greenhouse gases.
• Burning of fossil fuels, increases CO2 levels in
the atmosphere, which in turn cause increases in
global surface, ocean, and atmospheric
temperatures, which in turn may cause drastic
climate changes.
• From a product design point of view, developing
products that use less energy will help mitigate
this problem.
Eng 2503
Pollution Problems
• To understand how to live up to the
CERES Principles through design of
products that are more environmentally
friendly, a review of the various types of
pollution is necessary.
• Pollution types can be organized by their
scope of their environmental impact, from
global to regional to local impacts.
13 Eng 2503 14
Global Issues (Cont)
• Depletion of the Ozone Layer: The ozone layer is
a thin layer in the upper atmosphere that blocks
most UV radiation from reaching the Earth’s
surface.
• Fluorocarbon gases, can react with and reduce
the ozone gas in this layer.
• From a product design viewpoint, developing
products that do not make use of or release these
harmful chemicals, either in use, manufacture, or
disposal, will help mitigate this problem.
15 Eng 2503 16
4
 Global Issues (cont)
• Biodiversity: Minimizing biodiversity loss is
another global environmental impact
objective.
• Lost of habitat for different plant and animal
species due to our expanding society can
cause loss of ecosystems and extinction of
species.
• Developing products that use less new raw
material will help mitigate this problem.
Eng 2503 17
Regional and Local Issues (cont)
• Water pollution, either in the ground water, river,
bay, or ocean, is also a regional problem, often
caused by herbicides and pesticides, in addition
to suburban and urban street water run - off.
• Many other chemical compounds that are used in
products must be understood and controlled.
• E.g. Mercury poisoning caused by discharge of
mercury into the river- > Minimata disease.
Eng 2503 19
Regional and Local Issues
• Acid Rain: pollution by-products in one region can cause
acid rain in another region. Caused by excessive fossil
fuel air emissions. The lower pH level of rain can cause
regional plant and aquatic life to suffer.
• From a product development viewpoint, developing
products that use less energy will help reduce this
problem.
• Air pollution is a similar problem caused by excessive
fossil fuel emission for a regional area. Nitrogen
compounds, ozone, CO, and SO2 are common
combustion products released into the air.
• Developing products that use less energy will help
mitigate the problem.
Eng 2503 18
Basic DFE Methods: Design Guidelines
• Guidelines from a design point of view are available:
– Product structure
– Materials selection
– Labeling
– Fastening
• These guidelines are simple and effective when
implemented. After developing a concept, the guidelines
should be consulted, every guideline questioned, and the
underlying concepts modified to increase the guideline
performance.
• During detail design phase, a guideline should again be
consulted, to ensure the product developed is compatible
with these guidelines.
Eng 2503 20
5
 Basic approaches to reduce Product Structure Guidelines
environmental impact
1. Design to minimize material usage
2. Design for disassembly
3. Design for recycling
4. Design for remanufacturing
5. Design to minimize hazardous materials
6. Design for energy efficiency
7. Design to regulations and standards

Eng 2503 21 Eng 2503 22

Material Selection Guidelines

Labeling and Finish Guidelines

Eng 2503 23 Eng 2503 24

6
 Fastening Guidelines Summary
• Some key ideas in the design for the
environment include:
– Assessment must be completed considering the
entire product life cycle, from time material is
extracted from the earth until it is returned to the
earth.
– Basic DFE methods include smart material
selection, minimizing energy usage, and
increasing recycled content.
– DFE is good business and good for the
environment and future generations.

Eng 2503 25 Eng 2503 26

Useful Resources Thought question

• Sections of the ISO 14000 Standard
• Following DFE guidelines would seem to
• ISO 14001: Environmental Management
add cost to a product. What arguments
Systems – Specification and Guidance for
would you use to counter this perception?
Use
• ISO 14040: Life Cycle Assessment –
Principles and Guidelines
• ISO 14041: LCA – LC Inventory Analysis
• ISO 14042: LCA – Impact Assessment

Eng 2503 27 Eng 2503 28