Anticipatory Eco-Design Strategies for Smart Textiles: Perspectives on environmental risk prevention in the development of an emerging technology

This dissertation explores environmental aspects of smart textiles: products that feature a deep integration or even a fusion of textile and electronic materials. The emerging technology exemplifies a contemporary innovation trend of augmenting the functionality of every-day objects to make them smart. The environmental assessment shows that the mass application of such products can lead to increasing resource consumption (energy and raw materials) and to new waste problems at the end of the use phase. The early stage of a technology development process holds opportunities to steer the innovation along sustainable pathways. Environmentally conscious design aims to mitigate environmental impacts of new products. The thesis presents risk preventative eco-design strategies that can help to minimise adverse environmental impacts before large amounts of smart textiles are brought to the market. Notably, the work explores how Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) can be used as a decision support tool at the early stage of product development. A simplified LCA-framework for application in the smart textiles sector is proposed