SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES BETWEEN ENVIRONMENTAL SOUNDNESS AND RESOURCE EFFICIENCY AND THEIR CONSEQUENCES FOR DESIGN SUPPORT
Year: 2015
Editor: Christian Weber, Stephan Husung, Gaetano Cascini, Marco Cantamessa, Dorian Marjanovic, Monica Bordegoni
Author: Link, Sandra; Kloberdanz, Hermann; Denz, Naemi
Series: ICED
Institution: 1: TU Darmstadt, Germany; 2: VDMA - German Engineering Federation
Section: Design for Life
Page(s): 289-298
ISBN: 978-1-904670-64-3
ISSN: 2220-4334
Abstract
Environmental soundness and resource efficiency are important issues that should both be taken into account when engaging with sustainability. In recent years, several tools to assist designers to do this have been developed in design research. It is often incorrectly assumed that existing EcoDesign methods are absolute suitable to support designers in the development of resource efficient products. The comparison of the two topics, environmental soundness and resource efficiency, shows that although they have an overlap, significant differences can be identified. For design methodology, this means that some existing EcoDesign methods can be used to develop resource efficient products or can be adapted to resource efficiency. However, this is not sufficient. There is a lack of support for the anticipation of possible supply bottlenecks, which is a central characteristic of resource efficiency. How to integrate this topic into companies remains unclear.
Keywords: Resource Efficiency, Ecodesign, Criticality, Supply Bottlenecks, Risk Management