Green Design with Life Cycle in Mind

It is not impossible to integrate sustainability into early stages of design. Cradle-to-grave environmental impact analysis methods are rarely used as a metric during product development. In early stages of a project, companies measure feasibility according to money, performance and time metrics. Sustainability is commonly measured at a design cycle’s end on finished products when design features cannot be easily modified for sustainability measures. It is ineffective to apply new design metrics to finished products. Evaluating the ‘greenness’ of products is typically done to market the ‘greenest’ product in a line. This does not address the need to create sustainable products at project onset; thus, products remain ‘un-green’ and unsustainable.

It is time for new feasibility metric — Green Design with Life Cycle in Mind. Green design thinking must be accessible and applicable to product development through a set of tools designed for early stages of product development.