Chapter 6: Sustainability

Title: Environmental impact of manufactured products: a measure inspired by nature

Author(s): Prabir Sarkar, Hyo Won Suh

Address: Centre for Product Design and Manufacturing, Indian institute of Science, Bangalore, India | Department of Industrial Engineering, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Republic of Korea

Reference: International Conference on Product Lifecycle Management 2009 pp. 302 - 312

Abstract/Summary: Environmental impacts (EIs) of products are generally determined using criteria or indicators. As are many criteria or indicators available, during designing selecting some of them and assigning weights is difficult. As natural systems are considered sustainable, understanding natural systems could help develop methods for assessing EI of products. Nature could repeatedly recycle all materials and energies of a certain set of systems to create a similar set of systems again. Using analogy from nature, we express a 'minimal impact product' as a product that has the least impact on the environment. Deviation of a product from its minimal product condition is considered as a measure of the EI of that product. This paper describes a method to assess EI of a product based on the measurement of the new material and energy added.

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