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(356) LCA - The one and only DfE approach? Rebitzer, Gerald1, 1 ABSTRACT- Design for Environment (DfE) is an increasingly important factor in industry. This is triggered by market forces as well as evolving and new regulations. For the latter the most prominent example is the current EU draft directive regarding environmental impacts from electrical and electronic equipment (EEE directive). Regarding DfE methodology there is broad consensus that life cycle approaches are the most powerful and sound in assessing different design options, may it be for issues such as materials selection for a specific product (re-designing) or may it be for comparing different systems fulfilling a given function (re-thinking). The actual use of LCA in the design process however is far from being common practice in industry. Rather, totally different approaches based e.g., on checklists, recycling guidelines (dealing with ease of disassembly, etc.), analysis of the product content are widely used. This phenomenon can be explained on the one hand with the perception of many industrial decision makers about LCA being a very timely, knowledge intensive, and costly tool to apply. On the other hand industry needs hands-on decision support enabling the engineering designer to carry out the complex task of DfE as easily and efficiently as possible. Therefore methods and tools that combine the simplicity of the non-LC based approaches with the performance of the LCA methodology are required. Aiming at this goal a comprehensive multi-criteria DfE methodology including adapted LCA and LCC assessments have been developed and tested in cooperation with four companies from the automotive, aerospace, and building sector. It was found that efficient LCA based decision support for engineering designers can be provided, thus enhancing the DfE process. The method as well as results from selected case studies are presented. Key words: DfE, engineering design, LCA, LCC |
