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

As Environmentally Conscious Design (ECD) is growing in importance and an increasing amount of companies are beginning to introduce it into their product development processes, it is interesting to try and establish how companies have made it work. As this concept is still new for many organisations 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. The analysis of these interviews has shown two major research findings. Firstly decisions that have a major environmental impact are largely made in the pre-specification stages of the product development process. Secondly, it is recognised 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 organisations can learn from these results.