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Early attempts to identify green products focused on the development of eco-labels, such as those shown below:
Generally administered by governments, these labels attempted to condense the complex, multi-faceted environmental footprints of products into a single logo. Either a product was green, and could display an eco-label, or it was not. Unfortunately, true environmental performance is rarely so simple. Products and the processes used to manufacture them consume energy, utilize non-renewable and renewable materials, and generate emissions. In creating designs, product designers are continually forced to make decisions that involve trade-offs between multiple environmental impacts. Consider, for example, the automotive engineer trying to determine whether to use steel or a glass reinforced plastic for a car bumper. The steel is recyclable and the glass-reinforced plastic is not. But, the steel is heavier and will result in more fuel use when the vehicle is driven. So the steel bumper uses less material, but the glass-reinforced plastic uses less fuel over the lifetime of the vehicle. Which is better? It depends on how we value energy consumption, compared to material consumption. Such trade-offs are unavoidable. Every product will generate an environmental footprint and only rarely will one design alternative be unambiguously environmentally preferable. Designers will continually face trade-offs between different environmental impacts, yet must ultimately make design decisions. Further, designers must reconcile environmental performance with cost and other criteria. Informing these decisions will require a new set of tools that designers and engineers will need to master. One of the tools that can be used to evaluate the environmental footprints of products is Life Cycle Assessment.
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