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Design of Products and Processes for
Cleaner Production and Pollution Prevention

Text copyright 2006, Cleaner Production International LLC / www.cleanerproduction.com

The strategic foundation of Cleaner Production and Pollution Prevention is Life Cycle Assessment or Life Cycle Analysis (LCA). This involves studying the environmental impacts and threats to sustainability throughout the life cycle of a product, from natural resources extraction to production to use to ultimate disposal. The information from LCA is used to design products and services to reduce impacts and increase sustain-ability of products and services and the entire life cycle chain of production and compa-nies. This is commonly called Design for Environment (DFE) or green design.

LCA can be a very complex task, especially if the objective is to make a definite state-ment about the total environmental impacts of a product or production operation. How-ever, product designers have developed some useful approaches to make the task more manageable and efficient. Their objective is to improve design relative to an exist-ing design. Therefore they do not have to come up with an answer about the absolute or total impacts of a product or process - they just need to show that the new design is better than the old one.

To understand LCA, it is generally easier to understand DFE principles and then move on to the more complex issues of LCA. Therefore the publications and software pre-sented here start with relatively simple introductions to DFE and move on to more theo-retical guidance for LCA.

• Product Innovation: The Green Advantage
  Commonwealth of Australia. 2001. 19 pages.
  Overview of DFE benefits, strategies and tools. Includes case studies. Good basic introduction.
  
  
• Introduction to EcoReDesign: Improving the Environmental Performance of Manufac-tured Products
  Commonwealth of Australia. 2001. 16 pages.
  Well-designed description of the green design process, with some worksheets and flowcharts.
  
  
• Designing Products and Services with Sustainable Attributes
  West Michigan Sustainable Business Forum. 1999. 16 pages.
  Presents a matrix for evaluating environmental impacts related to product design and for improving the design. Good technical tool. 
  
  
• Greening Your Products
  US Environmental Protection Agency. 2002. 52 pages.
  Describes attributes of greener products, procedures for improving design, and procedures for greening of manufacturing processes.
  
  
• Green Products by Design: Choices for a Cleaner Environment
  US Office of Technology Assessment. 1992. 119 pages.
  Very good introduction to the topic with overviews of policies and applications, product design strategies, comparisons of international policies, and technical resources.  
   
• UNEP Background Guide to Life Cycle Management - a Bridge to Sustainable Products.
  UN Environment Programme. 2005. 108 pages.
  Extensive report on the concepts and issues in LCM including most recent developments among programs around the world.
   
• Life Cycle Management - a Bridge to Sustainable Products
  UN Environment Programme. 2005. 81 slides.
  Powerpoint slide show about LCM. Good training tool.
   
• Life Cycle Approaches: The road from analysis to practice
  United Nations Environment Programme, 2005. 89 pages.
  Gives an overview of the product life cycle in the broader perspective of life cycle approaches and to add a special focus on SMEs and developing countries. Includes a survey of LCA methods.
  
  
• Design for Environment Toolkit
  Minnesota Office of Environmental Assistance. No date. 72 pages.
  Relatively extensive and technical manual that includes design matrix plus information on the relative environmental impacts of various materials.
  
  
• Design for Environment Guide
  National Research Council Canada. 2001. 200 pages.
  Extensive guide with strategies and examples for DFE. Based on the UN PROMISE manual for DFE.
  
  
• Cleaner Technologies Substitutes Assessment
  US Environmental Protection Agency. 2001. 200 pages.
  Highly detailed and technical guidance for evaluating environmental aspects of alternative technologies, with examples from a range of industries.
  
  
• Green Chemistry Expert System
  US Environmental Protection Agency. 1998.
  Software program that helps users design more environmentally friendly chemicals and chemical manufacturing processes. Of most use to chemists and the chemical industry. 
  
  
• Comparing Environmental Impact Data on Cleaner Technologies
  European Environment Agency. 1997. 109 pages.
  Provides a framework for a systematic evaluation of cleaner technologies with the use of Environmental Performance Indicators. 
  
  
• Global Mitigation Technology Data System (GloTech)
  US Environmental Protection Agency.
  The GloTech software provides a way to build models of industrial processes, in order to estimate the environmental releases from entire systems. GloTech will estimate air, water, and land (waste) releases. GloTech can be used to store and rank information on technologies, which makes it a useful tool for comparing technologies on the basis of cost, environmental releases, or other parameters. GloTech also calculates the combined total impacts from a process network. Because of this ability to calculate total impacts, GloTech is useful as a tool for assessment of life-cycle impacts. 
  
  
• Extended Product Responsibility: A New Principle for Product-Oriented Pollution Prevention.
  Center for Clean Products and Clean Technologies. 1997. 156 pages.
  Provides 6 extensive case studies on DFE and life cycle management from US companies and an overview of EPR policy concepts and applications. 
  
  
• Eco-design: European state of the art. Part I: Comparative analysis and conclusions
  European Commission. 2000. 73 pages.
  Policy analysis of government promotion of DFE with case studies of most western European countries. Includes many examples and concludes with recommendations for government pro-motion of eco-design.
  
  
• Influences Upon Sustainable Product Development in the Developing World
  United Nations Environment Programme. 1995. 41 pages.
  Policy analysis report that provides an introduction and framework for understanding DFE in developing countries. Includes numerous examples of DFE from developing countries and de-scriptions of relevant international organizations. Useful for understanding the context of DFE.
  
  
• Evaluation of Life-Cycle Assessment Tools
  University of Tennessee Center for Clean Products and Clean Technologies. 1996. 95 pages.
  Detailed reviews of LCA software tools with comparisons and summary analysis. Very helpful for understanding the many complex issues in technical LCA. 
  
  
• Streamlined Life-Cycle Assessment
  Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry. 1999. 31 pages.
  Documents the different possible goals of LCA studies and how these different uses can affect streamlining. Because all LCAs are streamlined to varying degrees, this document is more a description of carefully planning and stating an LCA's goal than it is about Streamlined LCA methodology.
  
  
• Annotated Bibliography of Chemistry-Related Pollution Prevention Sources
  National Pollution Prevention Center for Higher Education. 1995. 19 pages.
  The fundamental composition of materials and chemicals is critical for DFE. This bibliography provides information on many papers and books with extensive technical information about how to design materials and chemicals for reduced environmental impact.  

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