A systematic review of environmentally conscious product design

Recently environmentally conscious product design (ECPD) is highlighted by research community, because of the global conscious about low carbon emission and sustainable development. ECPD cares about the environmental, social and economic impacts of products during their life cycle phases, with the destination to achieve product life cycle design for sustainability. Furthermore, information and communication technologies are important for the implementation of computer-aided eco-design. The theories, methods, software tools about ECPD during 2005 to 2015 were reviewed in this work. Five most related aspects including product eco-design, design for disassembly (DFD), design for recycling (DFR), material selection (MS), and eco-design software tools were analyzed as related categories. Eco-impact assessment was found to be a pre-step in ECPD followed by product eco-innovation. DFD, DFR, and MS helped to improve the energy efficiency and eco-friendliness of products. Eco-design software tools are focusing on CAD-integration, web-based and knowledge base-based characteristics. More eco-design software tools will be developed in specific industries and to handling products with composite materials.