Design for the environment is an approach used in modern days to produce quality products at an affordable price without harming our environment. In today’s world, global warming is the main concern for the whole world. To tackle this concern we should implement some techniques or methods while designing products in the lab. Different types of designing and analysis software are developed to fulfill this design for the environmental approach.
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The name, design for the environment came from the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) program which is created in 1992.
Now let’s dive in and learn some methods of sustainable design for the environment.
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Methods of sustainable design for the environment:
Recycling and reuse of materials:
- The product should be designed in a way that it is easy to recycle the used product.
- Also, easy to reuse its material.
- The main reason behind the recycling is that the waste product could cause harm to the environment.
- Also, recycling and reuse reduce the consumption of our precious natural resources.
Minimization of waste:
- The most approved way to minimize waste is to minimize the material used for the manufacturing of the product.
- Above can achieve by adopting the optimal design and avoiding the overdesigning of the product.
- Avoid materials with adhesive, artificial colors, paints and ink. It causes contamination in the process of recycling.
- Waste minimization is good for the environmental life cycle and biodiversity.
Process waste minimization:
- When we process the waste, the major part of the waste is coming from the process waste not product waste.
- So, we should concentrate on the process of waste minimization.
Easy for Disassembly:
- The product should not be complex and designed in such a way that it should disassemble easily.
- Every part of the product should remain intact while recycling.
- The complex design increases the cost of the product and hence become non-competitive.
Avoid the use of harmful material:
- We should design a product in such a way it avoids the use of harmful/hazardous material in the product.
- This harmful/hazardous material cause various health diseases to human being and animals.
- If hazardous material is non-avoidable during the designing and manufacturing, then make sure that it is recyclable or reusable.
Avoid danger to industry workers and customers:
- This point is very important in the design for the environment process.
- Design the product in such a way that it should easy to manufacture without harming or causing danger to the workers.
- Make sure that the chemical releases due to chemical composition during the manufacturing won’t harm any worker.
- The customer is god hence, the final product should be enough safe for the consumer.
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Recycling of packaging material:
- The material used for the packaging of the product should be environmentally friendly.
- It should be recyclable and reusable.
- The use of biodegradable material for the packaging is a good option.
Noise reduction from product:
- Noise pollution is the main concern in today’s world. The product should be designed in such a way that it should not exceed the noise limit set by the government.
- Focusing on the reduction of friction in the product could help to solve the noise reduction problem.
In this way, you can reduce a lot of pollution by practicing simple design for the environment process while designing any product in the design lab of your company. Many multinational companies following this practice of design for the environment for decades. Some companies adopted this practice are Hewlett Packard, Starbucks, IBM, BCD supply and Beta Technology.