[Back]

M. Huber, R. Pamminger, W. Wimmer:
"Ecodesign in a life cycle perspective, Waste prevention of products - a question of design and consumer patterns";
Poster: 2nd Boku Waste Conference, Universität für Bodenkultur, Wien; 2007-04-17 - 2007-04-19; in: "Waste matters. Integrating views", Facultas.wuv, Wien (2007), ISBN: 978-3-7089-0060-5; 315 - 324.

In the paper the interdependency of product design and waste arising will be portrayed. The generation of waste appears in all stages of the life cycle not only at the end of life when a product turns into waste. In the early stage of product development the majority of the environmental effects are determined - usually unintended referring to lack of knowledge or a lower degree of priority of environmental aspects. There are different Ecodesign strategies which focus on the minimization and prevention of waste. Selecting the right materials, dematerialization and minimizing waste during manufacturing, reducing waste during the use phase and design for recycling or reuse will be discussed. Specific improvement strategies will be generated to optimize the end-of-life performance of selected products.
In the conference paper a practical procedure for implementing environmental aspects into the product development process will be introduced and its application demonstrated. The main focus lies on different Ecodesign improvement strategies on waste prevention and minimization applied on product examples from three Austrian manufacturing companies. This procedure called "ECODESIGN Toolbox for Green Product Concepts" is developed in an ongoing research project funded by the Austrian Research Promotion Agency. The examples shown in the paper are preliminary results from this project (Huber, M. et al.2006).

life cycle thinking, product design, waste management, waste arising

http://publik.tuwien.ac.at/files/pub-mb_6020.pdf