Life-Cycle Design: Using LCA in Integrated Product and Material Design

This study will use Life Cycle Assessment methods to create and demonstrate a more effective framework for designing sustainable products. Sustainable or ?Green' products have become increasingly prevalent over the past 10-20 years as evidenced by the growth in bio-based materials, green labeling initiatives, etc. This shift represents an increase in consumer concern for the environment as well as an increase in corporate concern for pre-adopting sustainable practices which will soon be necessary. Unfortunately there is no recognized standard system for evaluating the sustainability of a product and thus many environmental marketing claims are left unjustified to the consumer. Additionally, few systems exist for evaluating materials and decisions during the design of sustainable products. As a result, green products are typically re-designed products with concern to one metric that represents sustainability, e.g. the exclusion of one or two widely known contaminants (e.g., PVC, BPA). These designs reflect a lack of communication between material and product designers regarding sustainability as well as a lack of attention to the unintended environmental impacts of a product. Given the ability to comprehensively evaluate the environmental impacts of synthetic material production as well as product construction and use through Life Cycle Assessment, it seems there should be an effective method for designing sustainable products while accounting for multiple categories of environmental impacts. Through case studies of recently designed polycarbonate product alternatives as well as PET product alternatives, this study will assess strengths and short-comings of current sustainable chemical product design methods and offer alternatives for more adequate environmental assessment during the design process.