DESIGN FOR SUSTAINABILITY: PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT TOOLS AND LIFE CYCLE ECONOMICS

Many major corporations have now included sustainability as part of their corporate objectives. There is an increased focus on sustainable operations as a way of implementing sustainability. A key method used to implement sustainability is through reuse. I t can be effectively argued that reuse, and profitability from it, would be more viable if the products were designed for it. Further, sustainability looks beyond the economics (profitability) to also the social impact (ecology) of the design. In this paper we develop an approach for design for sustainability (DFS). Using current product development and design tools as the starting point, we extend the process to include DFS