ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT ASSESSMENT IN DESIGN OR IS IT WORTH IT TO….pdfVIP

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON ENGINEERING DESIGN ICED 03 STOCKHOLM, AUGUST 19-21, 2003 ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT ASSESSMENT IN DESIGN OR IS IT WORTH IT TO CARRY OUT A FULL LCA? Marc Ernzer and Herbert Birkhofer Abstract Since 1996 the Collaborative Research Center (CRC) 392 has been working in the field of Design for Environment (DFE) at the Darmstadt University of Technology. In lectures and seminars it was found that the students achieved very good, sometimes astonishing results, considering their lack of environmental and professional experience and tough time schedules. The students just used ready-made Eco-indicator 99 (EI 99) scores to identify weak-points and to derive a requirements list. The situation for the students is similar to the conditions often found in industry: time pressure and limited environmental expertise. Based on these experiences within the course the question arose as to whether or not it is advisable to carry out a full life cycle assessment (LCA) to derive a requirements list during the task clarification. Therefore, the paper discusses open issues, based on these experiences and on the expertise gathered in cooperation projects with industry, as well as the sense and non- sense of a full LCA in product development. This discussion is fro m the viewpoint of a product developer and not that of an LCA expert. At the end the paper suggests a procedure to carry out an environmental impact assessment within the product development process. Keywords: case study, life cycle assessment, environment al requirements, early phases of de