A combination of life cycle assessment and knowledge based engineering to evaluate the sustainability of industrial products

The Life Cycle Thinking and the Knowledge Based Engineering approaches can be integrated in order to allow a preliminary-rough but effective Life Cycle Assessment, since the first phases of the design of an industrial product. In the present paper, we propose a general framework considering a number of different aspects, mainly concerning the manufacturing choices, but also related to the design of the product. The aim is to overcome the eco design paradox and to provide a tool supporting designer during the product concept to increase its sustainability

A Framework for Developing and Assessing Eco-innovations

This chapter presents a framework entitled “ECORE,” which aims to assist in developing and assessing radical eco-innovations. Our proposed framework seeks to address theoretical gaps and unresolved problems from three research fields – eco-innovation, quality management, and life cycle assessment. ECORE synthesizes ideas and concepts from these three fields into a set of key principles and practices that can further integrate sustainability into business practices. These key principles are based on the idea that stakeholder interactions should form the basis of eco-innovation, that a life cycle perspective should be adopted in the design stage of eco-innovation, and that stakeholder needs must be translated into eco-innovation characteristics throughout the design process. We illustrate our framework with a hypothetical example that focuses on reducing the environmental impacts of carbonated beverage consumption. The chapter concludes by presenting the views of practitioners that were invited to provide feedback on our proposals