Sustainable Operations and Closed Loop Supply Chains, Second Edition

CHAPTER 5

Closing the Loop—Design for the Environment (DfE)

5.1 General Guidelines for DfE

During the past 60 years or so, the industrial paradigm for the manufacturing of consumer goods has been to design and manufacture products for a single life cycle: minimizing material use (with the objective of minimizing variable production cost), so that products are less expensive but have to be discarded upon failure or obsolescence, rather than being repaired or reused. End-of-life, however, is only one stage of the life cycle of a product, as discussed in the last chapter. Broadly speaking, DfE means designing products that minimize environmental impact throughout their life cycle, including raw material extraction, transportation, manufacturing, ...