Integrating ecodesign into product development. Whitepaper

Our economic systems are largely based on innovation and the urge to improve our standard of living. Advancing technological knowledge has been identified as one of the most important factors of economic growth in the last decades.
While this is largely embedded in our society, the environmental impacts of our system cause serious concerns about future well-being. In recent years, the development of new or improved products thus often faces the challenge of creating an equal or better service with reduced environmental impacts. While being a challenge in itself, innovation also is necessary to make products more sustainable. Numerous companies thus strive to reduce the impact of their actions to a healthy minimum by integrating sustainability concerns into their development processes.
Since the inclusion of sustainability concerns into product development is not an easy task, research is needed to work on standardised processes and more efficient incorporation of sustainability metrics. The guideline presented in this document aims at providing the reader with a practical guide on how to integrate sustainability metrics into product development. The work conducted for the guideline was part of a project funded by the Ministry of Economy, Labor, and Tourism in Baden-Württemberg, Germany.