Accelerating preliminary eco-innovation design for products that integrates case-based reasoning and TRIZ method

While the innovativeness and market potential of a new product is normally emphasized, its environmental impact is often neglected. Despite their ability to help designers reduce the environmental impact of products throughout their life cycle, many eco-design methods focus on the redesign of existing products, necessitating a more innovative design capacity. This work describes a novel model to accelerate the preliminary eco-innovation product design by integrating the advantages of case-based reasoning and the TRIZ method. Previous cases from a database support a novel design to satisfy functional performances under the CBR framework. The innovative principles and evolution patterns of the TRIZ method can enhance the design level of new products to achieve eco-innovation. Four eco-innovation concepts for a PC mouse demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed model.     

Ecodesign methods focused on remanufacturing

Understanding the product's ‘end-of-life’ is important to reduce the environmental impact of the products' final disposal. When the initial stages of product development consider end-of-life aspects, which can be established by ecodesign (a proactive approach of environmental management that aims to reduce the total environmental impact of products), it becomes easier to close the loop of materials. The ‘end-of-life’ ecodesign methods generally include more than one ‘end-of-life’ strategy. Since product complexity varies substantially, some components, systems or sub-systems are easier to be recycled, reused or remanufactured than others. Remanufacture is an effective way to maintain products in a closed-loop, reducing both environmental impacts and costs of the manufacturing processes. This paper presents some ecodesign methods focused on the integration of different ‘end-of-life’ strategies, with special attention to remanufacturing, given its increasing importance in the international scenario to reduce the life cycle impacts of products.     

Integration of environmental aspects in product development: a stepwise procedure based on quantitative life cycle assessment

Significant environmental improvements can often be achieved by integrating environmental properties as an optimisation parameter in product development together with more traditional values such as production costs, functionality, aesthetics etc. This paper presents a professional method intended for managers based on quantitative life cycle assessment to identify environmental ‘hot spots’ in a reference product's life cycle and to select new environmentally optimised solutions for a new product. The paper takes its starting point in traditional procedures for product development (idea, analysis, goal definition, concept development and detail development) and shows step by step how the environmental properties of the new product can be optimised and thus contribute to the overall competitiveness of the new product.     

Applying 3DCE to environmentally responsible manufacturing practices

A review of recent literature in the fields of operations, supply chain, and management indicates there is on-going interest in improving new product development (NPD) performance. Three-dimensional concurrent engineering (3DCE), the simultaneous design of product, process and supply chain have been proposed as a way to improve traditional NPD outcomes, such as reduced time to market, lower costs, and improved customer acceptance. There appears to be a lesser concern associated with the environmental impacts of new products. Environmentally responsible manufacturing (ERM) on new product development focuses on reduced emissions, hazardous materials elimination, and lower product weight without sacrificing functionality. This paper explores the following issue: will employing 3DCE to integrate NPD and ERM yield better benefits than the separate and uncoordinated application of environmental goals and NPD initiatives?     

The application of life cycle assessment to design

This paper explores the practical application of life cycle assessment (LCA) to product system development. While life cycle assessment methods have been studied and demonstrated extensively over the last two decades, their application to product design and development has not been critically addressed. Many organizational and operational factors limit the integration of the three LCA components (inventory analysis, impact assessment and improvement assessment) with product development. Design of the product system can be considered a synthesis of individual decisions and choices made by the design team, which ultimately shape the system's environmental profile. The environmental goal of life cycle design is to minimize the aggregate environmental impacts associated with the product system. Appropriate environmental information must be supplied to decision makers throughout each stage of the development process to achieve this goal. LCA can serve as a source of this information, but informational requirements can vary as the design moves from its conceptual phase, where many design choices are possible, to its detailed design and implementation. Streamlined approaches and other tools, such as design checklists, are essential. The practical use of this tool in product development also depends on the nature and complexity of the product system (e.g. new vs. established), the product development cycle (time-to-market constraints), availability of technical and financial resources, and the design approach (integrated vs. serial). These factors will influence the role and scope of LCA in product development. Effective communication and evaluation of environmental information and the integration of this information with cost, performance, cultural and legal criteria will also be critical to the success of design initiatives based on the life cycle framework. An overview of several of these design initiatives will be presented.     

基于关键产品把控的舰船装备环境适应性设计对策分析方法

综合考虑舰船装备系统的复杂性和海洋环境的严酷性,提出了一种基于关键产品把控的舰船装备环境适应性设计对策分析方法.该方法在分析装备环境适应性设计基本要求的基础上,提出了按产品层次逐级进行环境适应性分析,根据其对上一级产品或整个装备系统功能的影响,层层剥离出环境适应性关键产品,通过识别环境适应性薄弱环节,消除环境适应性风险或隐患,建立了环境适应性设计关注点、环境要求、影响因素、薄弱环节、控制措施、具体方法等之间的映射关系,形成了环境适应性设计解决对策,建立了基于关键产品把控的舰船装备环境适应性设计对策分析方法,给出了方法应用示例.该方法为舰船以及其他装备开展环境适应性设计提供了一种可行的借鉴方法.     

Proposal for new quantitative eco-design indicators: a first case study

Eco-design is a valuable approach in order to reduce the environmental impact associated with a product system, by introducing environmental considerations early on in its design. Different strategies are possible for the implementation of eco-design, depending on the intended goals as well as the characteristics of the products. The present work proposes a series of eco-design indicators and tests to what extent the application of these simple indicators provides a reliable indication of the reduction of environmental impact, as measured by commonly employed Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) indicators. The product chosen for the case study was a water source heat pump. Two of the newly-developed indicators were applied and compared to LCIA indicators, focussing on design for disassembly and for recycling. A good and robust correlation was found, providing support to the thesis that these simple eco-design indicators can be used as a proxy to quickly and effectively gauge the environmental improvements introduced in a product system at the design stage.     

Development of an eco-ideation tool to identify stepwise greenhouse gas emissions reduction options for consumer goods

Pressure on consumer goods manufacturers to develop new products with significantly less environmental impact is growing, through increased consumer awareness of environmental issues and governments setting ambitious emissions reductions targets. A strategic response to this pressure is to prepare a portfolio of innovative product ideas to meet a range of future emissions reductions targets. However, although extensive work exists on ideation (the generation of novel product ideas) and eco-design (design for reduced environmental impact), eco-ideation (generation of ideas that particularly aim to reduce environmental impacts) has had little attention. The challenge of eco-ideation is to release the creativity of a broad range of employees, only few of whom may be familiar with the drivers of environmental impact.This paper proposes a novel tool to facilitate the generation of radical product and process ideas giving step-change reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. The features of products and processes that drive greenhouse gas emissions across the product life cycle were characterized with a set of indicators. A simple visual tool was created to show these indicators on a sliding scale between best and worst imaginable performance. A leading question associated with each slider was designed to stimulate lower impact ideas. The tool was iteratively refined and simplified through structured testing with individuals from across a range of roles and differing knowledge of environmental impacts. The final eco-ideation tool used 14 scales, with leading questions for each scale developed to stimulate idea generation.The tool’s effectiveness was evaluated through use in a series of 15 individual workshops and compared with the outcomes of an equal number of conventional 12-person group-brainstorming sessions. The comparison suggests that using the simple tool generally leads to a wider range of more radical ideas than emerge from group brainstorming.     

Manufacturing actor’s LCA

Modern industrial environmental management encompasses life-cycle thinking. This entails considering not only the emissions and resource use of the company’s production processes, but also the environmental consequences of all processes related to a product’s life cycle. However, no single actor can influence the whole life cycle of a product. To be effective, analysis methods intended to support improvement actions should therefore also consider the decision makers’ power to influence.Regarding the life cycle of a product, there are at least as many perspectives on life-cycle thinking as there are actors. This paper presents an approach with which manufacturing decision makers can sharpen the focus in life-cycle assessment (LCA) from a conventional ‘products or services’ emphasis to a company’s manufacturing processes. The method has been developed by combining knowledge gained from earlier LCA studies with new empirical findings from an LCA study of an SKF manufacturing line.We demonstrate how system boundaries and functional units in an LCA can be defined when adding the perspective of a manufacturing decision maker to the product life-cycle perspective. Such analysis helps manufacturing decision makers identify improvement potentials in their spheres of influence, by focusing on the environmental consequences of energy and material losses in manufacturing rather than merely accounting for the contributions of individual stages of the life cycle to the overall environmental impact. The method identifies and directly relates the environmental consequences of emissions or raw material inputs in the product life cycle to manufacturing processes. In doing so, the holistic systems perspective in LCA is somewhat diminished in favor of the relevance of results to manufacturing decision makers.     

关于环境影响评价几个问题的探讨

通过对传统发展模式下的环境影响评价的分析和探讨,指出其存在的主要缺失;提出可持续发展的环境影响评价需要强化的机制和面临的新课题,对环境影响评价为当前的环境保护服务提出几点可行的建议。     

全工业固废原料制备水泥工艺的生命周期评价研究

运用生命周期评价(LCA)方法,对以电石渣等工业固废为全部原料的水泥制造工艺产生的环境影响进行评价.通过对生产工艺进行分解及建模,基于实际数据建立生命周期清单,利用ReCiPe2016方法,在全球变暖、化石资源消耗、土地占用等17个小类及人体健康影响、生态系统影响及资源消耗3个大类中对工艺产生的环境影响进行评价.评价过程包括特征化、标准化和敏感性分析.结果表明,在以1 t成品水泥为功能单位的生产过程中,造成的环境影响总值为-0.0045 pt,其中,在人体健康影响和生态系统影响分类下最为显著,分别为-0.0027 pt和-0.0020 pt.与传统水泥生产相比,本工艺具有更低的资源能源消耗与碳排放量.固废作为原料来源带来的正面环境效益最为显著,而熟料煅烧与水泥粉磨则显示出最大的环境损害,也说明由于消纳了大量工业固废,本工艺对环境总体上是有益的.     

Environmental assessment of green hardboard production coupled with a laccase activated system

European consumption of wood-based panels reached record levels in recent years driven mostly by demand from end-use sectors: residential construction, furniture, cabinets, flooring and mouldings. The main panel types are composite boards such as particleboard, high density fiberboard (HDF), medium-density fiberboard (MDF) and other adhesively bonded composites such as plywood and wet-process fiberboard (hardboard). The synthetic resins used in their manufacture come from non-renewable resources, such as oil and gas. Several consequences are associated to this type of adhesives: variation in the availability and cost of these wood adhesives depends on raw materials, the formaldehyde emissions as well as the limited recyclability of the final product. Hence, in the search for alternatives to petroleum-based wood adhesives, efforts are being devoted to develop adhesives by using phenolic substitutes based on lignin, tannin or starch. In this context, the forest industry is increasingly approaching to enzyme technology in the search of solutions. The main goal of this study was to assess the environmental impacts during the life cycle of a new process for the manufacture of hardboards manufacture, considering the use of a two-component bio-adhesive formulated with a wood-based phenolic material and a phenol-oxidizing enzyme. This new product was compared to the one manufactured with the conventional phenol-formaldehyde resin. The study covers the life cycle of green hardboards production from a cradle-to-gate perspective, analysing in detail the hardboard plant and dividing the process chain in three subsystems: Fibers Preparation, Board Forming and Board Finishing.Auxiliary activities such as chemicals, bio-adhesive, wood chips, thermal energy and electricity production and transport were included within the system boundaries.Global warming (GW), photochemical oxidant formation (PO), acidification (AC) and eutrophication (EP) were the impact categories analysed in this study. Additionally, the cumulative energy demand was evaluated as another impact category. According to the results, four stages significantly influenced the environmental burdens of the production system: laccase production, on-site thermal energy and electricity production as well as wood chipping stage. Due to the environmental impact associated to the production of green bonding agents, a sensitivity analysis with special focus on the eutrophying emissions was carried out by evaluating the amount of laccase and lignin based phenolic material used. The combined reduction in both bonding agents may slightly reduce the contributions to this impact category. In addition, a hypothetical scenario with no laccase and with a higher concentration of the lignin based material (25% more) could improve the environmental profile in all impact categories with a reduction of 1.5% in EP.Further research should focus mainly on laccase production, in order to reduce its energy demand as well as on the amount of green adhesive required to obtain mechanical and swelling properties similar to those of conventional hardboard.     

Minimising environmental impact by sequencing cultured dairy products: two case studies

The increased production of cultured milk products has environmental consequences. To counteract the environmental impact from the dairy industry, it is important to process the products in a sequence designed to minimise waste. In a previous study a model was constructed to minimise the waste caused by a sequence for a given set of products and to calculate the environmental impact of a waste minimised sequence. This study applies successfully the model in case studies at two dairies. The number of products to be sequenced varied: Dairy A had 34 products and Dairy B had 16. The sequenced products were yoghurt, sour cream, cold sauce and crème fraiche, all with multiple flavours. The difference in number of products to be sequenced offered the opportunity to use both of the two model sequencing solutions: the heuristic and the optimised. The role of frequency of each product to be sequenced was investigated. Scenarios with differing frequencies were used in the case studies. The result showed clearly that the waste caused by a sequence decreased when product frequency was reduced. From a life cycle perspective, the environmental impact of processing cultured milk products can be greatly reduced by adopting sequences with fewer changes of product.     

工程与环境相结合定量化进行评价因子筛选初探

在总结环境影响评价因子筛选方法的基础上 ,提出了“工程与环境相结合 ,定量化进行评价因子筛选”的新方法。同时 ,结合实际工作 ,提出了较复杂项目在报告书阶段进行“环境影响因子再识别和评价因子再筛选”的思路。     

Feeding livestock food residue and the consequences for the environmental impact of meat

The environmental impact of meat is high mainly due to the feed required by livestock in combination with the impacts of cultivating, transporting and processing of feed crops such as tapioca and grains. Like regular feed crops, livestock also feed on residue from the food industry, such as pulp, scrap and peels. Both types of raw material have different environmental impacts. Feeding food residue to livestock is an efficient way to upgrade a low quality material into high quality foods. In the Netherlands, food residue represents the majority of the feedstock for feed. Distinguishing crops from food residue has consequences for the ascribed environmental impact of meat. This paper separates these two streams using volume, environmental impact and their relevance in meat production. An assessment is made of three food industries (sugar beet industry, vegetable oil industry and potato product industry) that produce the largest stream of food residue, and of the pork industry, as an example of meat production. The environmental impact of food residue-based feed is allocated in three different ways: mass ratio, economic basis, and no assigned burden. We found that the amount of pork produced from food residue is substantial. The environmental impact of food residue-based feed is also significantly lower than grain-based feed. We discuss changes in vegetable and in animal product consumption that influence the environmental impact of pork. It is concluded that the use of current food residue keeps the environmental impact of livestock foods relatively low. However, a further increase in meat consumption would require more feed grains with a correspondingly larger environmental impact because food residues are used up.     

我国实施环境标志的探讨

环境标志是新一代环境标准的总称,实施环境标志是解决环境问题的根本途径.本文对我国实施环境标志进行了研究和探讨,提出必须建立组织机构和进行系统工程的研究等.      

滇池流域主要农业产品水足迹空间格局及其环境影响测度

科学合理的评估农业产品水资源消耗及其环境影响对保护区域农业生产安全和水资源合理配置具有重要意义.本文以滇池流域为例,耦合水足迹和生命周期评价方法,对流域内2005—2011年主要农业产品水足迹空间格局进行分析,并对其环境影响进行测度.结果显示:滇池流域主要农作物和动物产品年平均水足迹分别为4.88×108m3·a-1和8.97×108m3·a-1,动物产品总水资源消耗大于农作物产品.动物产品水足迹的人类健康和生态系统质量总环境影响高于农作物,但资源消耗总环境影响要低于农作物,各区县产品水足迹环境影响值最大的为猪肉、水稻和玉米.各区县主要产品水足迹及其环境影响空间差异显著,嵩明县和晋宁县的产品水足迹环境影响最高,城区则较低.本文最后提出:评价一种产品对区域水资源的可持续性影响时,不仅要考虑产品耗水量也应考虑产品对水资源产生的潜在环境影响大小,应从水资源管理和生命周期角度综合考虑.水资源量少的地区,应侧重选择水资源消耗量小的产品,水量充沛地区则应选择对人类和生态产生影响小的产品.     

瓦楞纸箱全生命周期环境影响评价研究

分析了瓦楞纸箱从原材料生产、产品加工到使用后的废物处置整个全生命周期的物耗、能耗及向环境中的排放;根据ISO14040系列标准制定的技术框架,建立了全生命周期评价(Life Cycle Assessment,LCA)模型,采用Eco-indicator 99方法,对瓦楞纸箱进行了整体和基于流程的全生命周期环境影响分析,得出其全生命周期和原料生产、产品加工、废物管理3个流程的主要环境影响类型和对应指标值,以及造成各流程主要环境影响类型的原因.为改善瓦楞纸箱的环境性能,针对其设计、生产加工、使用、废物处理等方面提出了改进建议;并对全生命周期环境影响评价研究中存在的不足进行了总结.      

生态标志和产品的生命周期评价

获得生态标志，是对产品环境性能的肯定，表明其整个生命周期的环境性能达到了特定的要求，消费者也可直接根据生态标志图案购得自己喜好的环境友好产品，生命周期评价是一中评价产品，工艺或活动从原料采掘到生产、运输、分销、使用，回用，维护，循环和最终处置的整个生命周期阶段相关环境负荷的过程，大多数生态标志标准的确定都采用了生命周期的评价的方法，文章对生态标志的概念、发展状况、标准的确定性和生命周期评价等作了简     

欧洲战略环境影响评价工作程序与特点分析研究

战略环境影响评价是指对法律、政策、计划或规划及其替代方案的环境影响进行正式的、系统的和综合的评价。欧洲战略环境影响评价的理论和实践在国际上具有领先的地位。本文介绍了战略环境影响评价的发展历程,特别对欧洲发达国家的战略环境影响评价的工作程序做了深入的分析,从战略的筛选、确定范围、环境影响评价、决策和批准、执行和监督、咨询与公众参与等方面,总结了欧洲战略环境影响评价的工作特点,对于中国战略环评工作的推动具有一定的借鉴意义。