Eco‐Designing the Use Phase of Products in Sustainable Manufacturing

Abstract

Sustainable manufacturing has increasingly included design for environment methodologies with the objective of improving the environmental performance of products over their entire life cycles. Current European Union (EU) directives on eco-design focus on the use phase of energy-related products (ErPs). However, the maintenance of various household non-ErPs is performed with ErPs; therefore, the environmental impacts of product maintenance have an important role in the life cycle of non-ErPs. This article presents two eco-design studies where the implementation of improvement strategies of the use and maintenance phase of products had relevant results. Furthermore, environmental communication-touser strategies were important to ensure the commitment of users toward eco-efficient behaviors. First, a knife was eco-designed according to strategies which focused on materials, processing, maintenance, and communication to user. By applying eco-design in a cradle-to-consumer scope, improvements decreased the environmental impact of the eco-designed product by 30%. However, when considering the entire life cycle of the ecodesigned product, environmental impacts could be reduced by up to 40% and even up to 93% (depending on the cleaning procedure) as a result of large improvements in the maintenance stage. Second, a woman's jacket was eco-designed following multifunctionality, recycled materials, and efficient maintenance strategies. The new Livingstone jacket reached environmental improvements between 32% and 52% in the indicators analyzed. In this case, maintenance contributed between 40% and 87% of the reduction. As shown in this study, maintenance behavior and communication-to-user strategies are crucial to the eco-design of different household products (traditional vs. flexible design) and their consideration in the design process can reduce their environmental impact by between 40% and 80%. Keywords:communication to user eco-design eco-efficiency energy-related products (ErPs) industrial ecology innovation Supporting information is available on the JIE Web site

Longitudinal Analysis of the Eco‐Design Management Standardization Process in Furniture Companies

“…Sanyé‐Mengual and colleagues () claimed that the adoption of the eco‐design process is influenced by the amount of resources and time available at the beginning of that process. Adoption of eco‐design standards involve organizational changes, even at the strategic level.…”

“…The field of eco-design tools is quite broad and ambiguous (Maranzana et al 2014;Sanyé-Mengual et al 2014;Lindahl and Ekermann 2013;Bovea and Pérez-Belis 2012). According to Lindahl and Ekermann (2013), there seems to be an increased interest among researchers in creating new techniques, but little in investigation of their practical results.…”

“…; Sanyé‐Mengual et al. ). Nevertheless, Spanish furniture manufacturers have taken this environmentally friendly path with a number of limitations related mainly to the problems that arise when trying to align the environmental requirements with the functional requirements of products (De Assunção and Câmara ; Cordero et al.…”

“…Some companies have adopted tools with the aim of improving the environmental impact of their products, such as eco-design, environmental certification, and eco-labels (Forest Stewardship Council or carbon footprint) (Parikka-Ahola 2008;Veisten 2007;González-García et al 2011a;Gordić et al 2014). There are numerous studies that analyze the application of these tools, based on life cycle assessment (LCA), and their potential (Finnveden et al 2009;González-García et al 2011a;Jacquemin et al 2012;Sanyé-Mengual et al 2014). Nevertheless, Spanish furniture manufacturers have taken this environmentally friendly path with a number of limitations related mainly to the problems that arise when trying to align the environmental requirements with the functional requirements of products (De Assunção and Câmara 2000, July; Cordero et al 2010;Jonker and Harmsen 2012;Lopes and de Azevedo 2014).…”

“There is no carnival without samba”: Revealing barriers hampering biodiversity-based R&D and eco-design in Brazil

“…The literature has highlighted a range of benefits that can come from the adoption of eco-design, such as improving sales and profit (Plouffe et al, 2011;Fujimoto et al, 2009), improving corporate reputation (Sany e-Mengual et al, 2014;Vercalsteren, 2001), improving innovative capacity (Hellstr€ om, 2007), and improving organizational performance in terms of operational and environmental performance (Jabbour et al, 2015). However, eco-design is not a simple method of corporate greening and its implementation will face similar challenges to those that any other environmental management initiative might face (Poulikidou et al, 2014).…”