Design for the environment (DFE) – An approach to achieve the ISO 14000 international standardization

It is proposed that by adopting design for the environment (DFE) principles, US companies can easily comply with the environmental portion of the International Standards Organization (ISO) 14000 standards and become competitive in today’s global market. DFE concepts present unique challenges to designers and introduce significant changes in the company’s market share and profitability without sacrificing sustainable development. The design engineers must ask and answer questions about the life cycle of the product and its production process. Their goal is reducing overall production costs and environmental impact of waste production and disposal by optimizing energy and material consumption, minimizing waste generation, or by reusing process output waste streams as raw materials for other processes. Application of DFE principles in the first stages of process design can change a product life cycle by not only reducing overall cost, but also the environmental impact of production and disposal.