DfE for products distributed across borders

In recent years, product assessment from the viewpoint of environmental aspects has become one of the tools which are commonly used for Design for Environment (DfE). On the other hand, many regulations like WEEE and RoHS and domestic laws have been launched. Manufacturers have their own product assessment method to evaluate the items related to these kinds of regulations. However, manufacturers do not enough consider the system to circulate resources more effectively before considering individual product design. It is important for manufacturers to enhance traceability of the products and to identify all stakeholderspsila environmental requirements along the whole lifecycle of their products because nowadays many products including used products are internationally distributed. In this paper, we surveyed the current DfE activities of Japanese manufacturers belonging to several industrial sectors mainly focused on electric and electronics industry, and then we proposed several guides for DfE applied to internationally distributed products.