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(82-03) New Perspectives in Environmentally Sound Product Design. Steinberg, Iris*,1, Szpadt, Emilia1, Jager, Johannes1, 1 Darmstadt University of Technology, Darmstadt, Germany ABSTRACT- Life Cycle Assessment is a well established method for determining potential environmental impacts of a product throughout it′s entire life cycle. Most frequently, life cycle assessments have been performed retrospectively, i.e. for the already marketed products. Most of the potential environmental impacts can be, however, determined already in the design phase, in which the sequence of production processes is being specified. Thus, it is desired to develop methods and tools which will allow for predicting and assessment of a product′s impacts prospectively, i.e. already in the design phase. For this purpose, an interdisciplinary teamwork of engineers, natural and social scientist was formed at the Darmstadt University of Technology. The group works together within the research project SFB 392: Development of Environmentally Sound Products. The main focus of the project is to develop a practical tool which will allow to perform a life cycle assessment of a product, based on data derived directly form the Computer Aided Design (CAD) System. For this purpose, inventories of individual production processes, product′s life phases as well as its disposal will be completed. The inventory data will be fed to the computer-based assessment tool LCAD (Life Cycle Assessment for Computer Aided Design), by means of which, an environmental and economic evaluation will be performed. The proposed tool will allow to predict potential environmental impacts of the proposed design solutions in the early development phase. Final results of the environmental impact assessment will be provided in a quantitative form (Eco-index). The tool provides an opportunity to track down the processes responsible for particular environmental impacts and thus eliminate/replace the unfavourable processes, respectively. The proposed tool will allow development of future oriented, environmentally sound products by the combination of ecological, technical and economic criteria. Key words: Environmentally sound products, Life Cycle Assessment , Product design |
