EcoDesign Guidelines (DIA)

PURPOSE OF THE GUIDELINES

EcoDesign guidelines and checklists can provide a valuable yet simple tool to enhance the design process and ensure some of the more important environmental issues and impacts are addressed. The fact that product development timeframes are getting shorter at the same time as product requirements are becoming more complex, diverse and demanding, means that we have to be smarter about how EcoDesign can be successfully applied.

These guidelines have been distilled from an extensive body of EcoDesign knowledge developed over the last decade by many organisations worldwide, including the Centre for Design. They reflect current thinking and seek to make EcoDesign a catalyst for responsible innovation.

The guidelines aim to cover the core issues that you should consider when attempting to ‘design out’ negative environmental factors and minimise product-related impacts. The following strategies and guidelines are in no way a comprehensive or complete guide to EcoDesign. They are however a useful guide for designers working on tight timelines and budgetary constraints, still eager to pursue logical environmental improvements and features.

Most importantly, we have attempted to streamline the process by presenting the key issues and prompts. EcoDesign should be about generating creative and innovative environmental solutions, as opposed to overly prescriptive and rigid criteria. Explore, question, and have fun.

A copy of the guidelines is available here for download as a PDF file (file size 900kb)