Summary The growing emphasis on design for sustainability requires that the harmful side effects to workers, users, and local and global natural ecosystems must be minimized by reducing the rate of material and energy consumptions that lead to the harmful side effects. As corporations face stricter regulations on emissions, effluents, and solid waste disposal, they are forced to develop technologies for disassembly, re-manufacturing, and recycling as well as for higher energy efficiency products and processes. The challenge of design for sustainability has, therefore, forced corporate product strategists and product development planners to address the following series of questions: How to formulate a competitive product strategy for environmentally-safe product life cycle design? What should be the product life cycle? How long? Should the product be ‘sold” or ‘leased’? How to set correct competitive targets for product function, features, performance, quality and reliability? How should the product realization process be organized to ensure ‘designed-in’ quality into products without missing the product introduction target timing or target cost? Environmentally-safe product life cycle design requires the product design and manufacturing expertise at the stage of the product strategy formulation itself. A methodology for the formulation of competitive product strategy is presented as a starting point for design for sustainability.