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Concept
Design for the Environment
Summary
Design for the Environment (DfE) is a design approach to reduce the overall human health and environmental impact of a product, process or service, where impacts are considered across its life cycle. Different software tools have been developed to assist designers in finding optimized products or processes/services. DfE is also the original name of a United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) program, created in 1992, that works to prevent pollution, and the risk pollution presents to humans and the environment. The program provides information regarding safer chemical formulations for cleaning and other products. EPA renamed its program "Safer Choice" in 2015.
Initial guidelines for a DfE approach were written in 1990 by Anneke van Waesberghe with her East Meets West not for profit organization. It became a global movement targeting design initiatives and incorporating environmental motives to improve product design in order to minimize health and environmental impacts by incorporating it from design stage all the way to the manufacturing process. The DfE strategy aims to improve technology and design tactics to expand the scope of products. By incorporating eco-efficiency into design tactics, DfE takes into consideration the entire life-cycle of the product, while still making products usable but minimizing resource use. The key focus of DfE is to minimize the environmental-economic cost to consumers while still focusing on the life-cycle framework of the product. By balancing both customer needs as well as environmental and social impacts DfE aims to "improve the product use experience both for consumers and producers, while minimally impacting the environment".
Four main concepts that fall under the DfE umbrella.
Design for environmental processing and manufacturing: Raw material extraction (mining, drilling, etc.), processing (processing reusable materials, metal melting, etc.) and manufacturing are done using materials and processes which are not dangerous to the environment or the employees working on said processes.
Official source
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