Success in environmentally conscious design: how is it achieved and maintained?

As environmentally conscious design (ECD) is growing in importance and an increasing number of companies are beginning to introduce it into their product development processes, it is interesting to establish how companies have made it work. As this concept is still new for many organizations it is difficult to predict exactly what constitutes successful ECD. As part of the DEEDS research project at Cranfield University it was therefore decided to conduct a series of in-depth interviews in thirty companies from the electronic/electrical sector in the UK, Central Europe and USA. This paper presents two of the major research findings from this project. Firstly decisions that have a major environmental impact are largely made in the pre-specification stages of the product development process. Secondly, it is recognized that most companies have developed an information supply system to support ECD and have used people identified as environmental champions to do this. This paper explores the significance of these two findings and highlights the way in which other organizations can learn from these results