Product eco-design

The aim of this article is to present the principles of ecodesign and to map out the various possible methods for implementing it. In today's competitive environment, where the environment has a key role to play, it is important for each company to be able to identify the most appropriate approach to ecodesign, which involves integrating the environment into the design of products (goods or services) and processes. Despite its name, ecodesign does not aim to unbalance design in favor of the environment. It aims to find compromises that reconcile several requirements: quality and performance, technical feasibility, cost control and respect for the environment.

Rigor and pragmatism are the watchwords here. In France, a lot of water has flowed under the bridge since a small number of people from diverse backgrounds (academics, industry, associations, consultants...) discovered the methodology of product life cycle assessment (LCA) in the early 1990s. Debates and controversies have since calmed considerably. A whole range of international standards has been drawn up, addressing the environmental characteristics of products from various angles: their assessment, their integration into design and the various forms of environmental product labelling. Most of these standards were first published between 1995 and 2005, and some have already been revised.

The main assertion of this article is as follows: you can't embark on the eco-design of a product without a minimum knowledge of the reasoning behind life cycle analysis (LCA). LCA remains the benchmark method for eco-design. This does not mean, however, that LCA is the only relevant method for determining and justifying eco-design choices, everywhere and in all cases. Whichever approach is chosen, however, we must not allow ourselves to be trapped by preconceived ideas, which sometimes turn out to be false leads. How can we distinguish the wheat from the chaff? By going back to basics, in other words, by examining every question that arises in the light of the essential concepts of LCA.

What is the minimum you need to know about "LCA reasoning"? This is the subject of the first part of this article, which provides a definition of ecodesign and a presentation of its principles, through a corpus of essential notions that can be considered a necessary and sufficient foundation for embarking on ecodesign. In its second part, this article presents a range of methods that can be used to carry out an ecodesign project. The typology presented by the author (predominantly quantitative, semi-quantitative or predominantly qualitative methods) was proposed in the first edition of this article (published in 1997) and has since been widely used.