Design for Environment

Design for the Environment Program (DfE) is a United States Environmental Protection Agency

United States Environmental Protection Agency

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is an agency of the federal government of the United States charged with protecting human health and the environment, by writing and enforcing regulations based on laws passed by Congress...

(USEPA) program, created in 1992, that works to prevent pollution, and the risk pollution presents to humans and the environment. The EPA DfE program provides information regarding safer electronics

Electronics

Electronics is the branch of science, engineering and technology that deals with electrical circuits involving active electrical components such as vacuum tubes, transistors, diodes and integrated circuits, and associated passive interconnection technologies...

, safer flame retardants, safer chemical formulations

Chemical substance

In chemistry, a chemical substance is a form of matter that has constant chemical composition and characteristic properties. It cannot be separated into components by physical separation methods, i.e. without breaking chemical bonds. They can be solids, liquids or gases.Chemical substances are...

, as well as best environmental practices. DfE employs a variety of design approaches that attempt to reduce the overall human health and environmental impact of a product, process or service, where impacts are considered across its life cycle. Different software tools have been developed to assist designers in finding optimized products (or processes/services).
The three main goals of DfE are:

Promoting green cleaning
Green cleaning
Green cleaning refers to using cleaning methods and products with environmentally-friendly ingredients to preserve human health and environmental quality...

and recognizing safer consumer and industrial and institutional products through safer product labeling.
Defining Best Practices in areas ranging from auto refinishing to nail salon safety.
Identifying safer chemicals, including life cycle considerations, through Alternatives Assessment.

To learn more about DfE, watch: http://www.epa.gov/dfe/multimedia/recognizedforsaferchemistry/dfe_video_popup.html

There are three main concepts that fall under the Design for Environment umbrella:

Design for environmental processing and manufacturing: This ensures that raw material extraction
Resource extraction
The related terms natural resource extraction both refer to the practice of locating, acquiring and selling natural resources....

(mining, drilling, etc.), processing (processing reusable materials, metal melting, etc.) and manufacturing
Manufacturing
Manufacturing is the use of machines, tools and labor to produce goods for use or sale. The term may refer to a range of human activity, from handicraft to high tech, but is most commonly applied to industrial production, in which raw materials are transformed into finished goods on a large scale...

are done using materials and processes which are not dangerous to the environment or the employees working on said processes. This includes the minimization of waste and hazardous by-products, air pollution, energy expenditure and other factors.
Design for environmental packaging: This ensures that the materials used in packaging are environmentally friendly, which can be achieved through the reuse of shipping products, elimination of unnecessary paper and packaging products, efficient use of materials and space, use of recycled
Recycling
Recycling is processing used materials into new products to prevent waste of potentially useful materials, reduce the consumption of fresh raw materials, reduce energy usage, reduce air pollution and water pollution by reducing the need for "conventional" waste disposal, and lower greenhouse...

and/or recyclable materials.
Design for disposal or reuse: The end-of-life of a product is very important, because some products emit dangerous chemicals into the air, ground and water after they are disposed of in a landfill. Planning for the reuse
Reuse
To reuse is to use an item more than once. This includes conventional reuse where the item is used again for the same function, and new-life reuse where it is used for a different function. In contrast, recycling is the breaking down of the used item into raw materials which are used to make new...

or refurbishing of a product will change the types of materials that would be used, how they could later be disassembled and reused, and the environmental impacts such materials have.

Life cycle assessment

A life-cycle assessment is a technique to assess environmental impacts associated with all the stages of a product's life from-cradle-to-grave A life-cycle assessment (LCA, also known as life-cycle analysis, ecobalance, and cradle-to-grave analysis) is a technique to assess environmental impacts...

(LCA) is employed to forecast the impacts of different (production) alternatives of the product in question, thus being able to choose the most environmentally friendly

Environmentally friendly

Environmentally friendly are terms used to refer to goods and services, laws, guidelines and policies claimed to inflict minimal or no harm on the environment....

. A life cycle analysis can serve as a tool when determining the environmental impact of a product or process. Proper LCAs can help a designer compare several different products according to several categories, such as energy

Energy

In physics, energy is an indirectly observed quantity. It is often understood as the ability a physical system has to do work on other physical systems...

use, toxicity

Toxicity

Toxicity is the degree to which a substance can damage a living or non-living organisms. Toxicity can refer to the effect on a whole organism, such as an animal, bacterium, or plant, as well as the effect on a substructure of the organism, such as a cell or an organ , such as the liver...

, acidification, CO2 emissions

Carbon dioxide

Carbon dioxide is a naturally occurring chemical compound composed of two oxygen atoms covalently bonded to a single carbon atom...

, ozone depletion

Ozone depletion

Ozone depletion describes two distinct but related phenomena observed since the late 1970s: a steady decline of about 4% per decade in the total volume of ozone in Earth's stratosphere , and a much larger springtime decrease in stratospheric ozone over Earth's polar regions. The latter phenomenon...

, resource depletion

Resource depletion

Resource depletion is an economic term referring to the exhaustion of raw materials within a region. Resources are commonly divided between renewable resources and non-renewable resources...

and many others. By comparing different products, designers can make decisions about which environmental hazard to focus on in order to make the product more environmentally friendly.

Safer Product Labeling Program

DfE certifies green cleaning

Green cleaning

Green cleaning refers to using cleaning methods and products with environmentally-friendly ingredients to preserve human health and environmental quality...

products through its Safer Product Labeling Program. This program offers an opportunity to product manufacturers to partner with DfE and have their products certified by DfE criteria and standards. The DfE scientific review team screens each ingredient in a cleaning product for potential human health and environmental effects based on the best currently available information, EPA predictive models, and expert judgment. DfE recognized products that contain only those ingredients that pose the least concern among chemicals in their class. There are currently 2,000 DfE certified cleaning products.

Alternatives Assessment Program

In order to help industries choose safer chemicals for applications, DfE conducts Alternatives Assessments. This program brings together environmental organizations, industry leaders, academia, and others to evaluate the environmental and health impacts of potential alternatives to problematic chemicals. The program uses a variety of approaches to investigate safer chemistries. Life-cycle assessment can be conducted to understand the phases (e.g., production, use, and disposal) where industry can make changes to realize environmental and health benefits. DfE Hazard-based Alternatives Analyses evaluate the hazards posed by chemicals during relevant phases in the product life cycle. These approaches can be applied to identifying safer alternative chemicals for applications that now use priority chemicals of concern. The outcome of an Alternatives Assessments Partnership provides industry with the information they need to choose safer chemicals, as well as avoid unintended consequences of switching to a poorly understood substitute.

Best Practices Approach

DfE's Best Practices approach is designed to enhance the awareness of health and environmental concerns, minimize pollution, and protect workers and communities by promoting the use of safer alternative chemical products and cleaner, more efficient practices. After a chemical ingredient has been reviewed by a DfE Alternatives Assessment and no clear alternative is available, the industry is encouraged to use the Best Practices approach as formulated by DfE. Currently, there is a Best Practices approach for both the Automotive Refinishing industry and Spray Polyurethane Foam.

External links

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