A taxonomy of ecodesign tools for integrating environmental requirements into the product design process

Over the years a wide range of techniques have been developed to evaluate the environmental performance of products. However, they all consider the environmental aspect of a product in an isolated way, without taking into account the remaining requirements that a designer has to consider during the design process. Hence, the integration of environmental aspects into the early stages of the design process together with a multi-criteria approach that makes it possible to balance the environmental requirements against other traditional requirements are two of the key factors for successful sustainable design. This article reviews and classifies tools that have been developed to evaluate the environmental requirement of products and to facilitate its integration into the product design process. With the intention of providing designers with a brief guide to selecting the ecodesign tool that best fits a specific case study, a classification was made according to criteria such as: 1) the method applied for the environmental assessment, 2) the product requirements that need to be integrated in addition to the environmental one (multi-criteria approach), 3) whether the tool has a life cycle perspective (i.e. it considers all the stages of the life cycle of a product), 4) the nature of the results (qualitative or quantitative), 5) the stages of the conceptual design process where the tool can be applied, and 6) the methodology taken as a basis for such integration.