Why Do Firms Want to Design for the Environment?

Modern day businesses all aim to produce goods at a low cost while maintaining quality, staying competitive in the global marketplace, and meeting consumer preferences for more environmentally friendly products. To help businesses meet these challenges, EPA encourages businesses to incorporate environmental considerations into the design process. The benefits of incorporating DfE include cost savings, reduced business and environmental risks, expanded business and market opportunities, and to meet environmental regulations (USEPA 2001).

How Does a Business Design for the Environment?

A business can design for the environment by the following ways:

• Evaluating the human health and environmental impacts of its processes and products.
• Identifying what information is needed to make human health and environment decisions.
• Conducting an assessment of alternatives.
• Considering cross‐media impacts and the benefits of substituting chemicals.
• Reducing the use and release of toxic chemicals through the innovation of cleaner technologies that use safer chemicals.
• Implementing pollution prevention, energy efficiency, and other resource conservation measures.
• Making products that can be reused and recycled.
• Monitoring the environmental impacts and costs associated with each product or process.
• Recognizing that although change can be rapid, in many cases a cycle of evaluation and continuous improvement is needed (USEPA 2017).

Design for Environment

DfE is a design approach to reduce the overall human health and environmental impact of a product, process, or service, where impacts are considered across its life cycle. Different software tools have been developed to assist designers in finding optimized products or processes/services. DfE is also the original name of a USEPA program, created in 1992, that works to prevent pollution and the risk pollution presents to humans and the environment. The program provides information regarding safer chemical formulations for cleaning and other products. The USEPA renamed its program “Safer Choice” in 2017 (USEPA 2017).

Initial guidelines for a DfE approach were written in 1990 by East Meets West, a New York–based nongovernmental organization. It became a global movement targeting design initiatives and incorporating environmental motives to improve product design in order to minimize health and environmental impacts by incorporating it from design stage all the way to the manufacturing process. The DfE strategy aims to improve technology and design tactics to expand the scope of products. By incorporating eco‐efficiency into design tactics, DfE takes into consideration the entire life cycle of the product, while still making products usable but minimizing resource use. The key focus of DfE is to minimize the environmental‐economic cost to consumers while still focusing on the life‐cycle framework of the product. By balancing both customer needs as well as environmental and social impacts, DfE aims to “improve the product use experience both for consumers and producers, while minimally impacting the environment” (Luttropp and Lagerstedt 2006).