Key Environmental Performance Indicators (KEPIs): A new approach to environmental assessment

A new Key Environmental Performance Indicators (KEPIs) approach has been developed considering the perspective of a designer who may like to improve the environmental performance of the products but has limited resources and understanding of complex environmental issues. This approach empowers the designer with indicators like the area of PWB, the amount of precious metals etc which account for the physical and chemical characteristics of the product and its components. The indicators can be used for setting guidelines, benchmarking, monitoring and improving environmental performance. These indicators are easy to use, and require little time and data for assessing the environmental performance. The KEPIs approach greatly reduces the reliance on the product chain for gathering of data and allows the manufacturers to make big leaps, in improving the lifecycle environmental performance of the products, on their own.