Design for Environment (DfE)

Pollution and Control Analysis

Let Air Be Air, Let Water Be Water, Let Land Be Land

By Waqas Ali Tunio (07ME34)

Quaid-e-Awam University of Engineering, Science & Technology, Nawabshah - Pakistan
 Objective

• Use design to reduce the overall environmental

impacts of a product dramatically.
 Introduction
• Design For Environment (DFE) is the idea of
implementing certain aspects of environmentally
friendly design to create a sustainable product .
Although there is no actual DFE certification, following
the Design For Environment guidelines helps to
minimize waste and pollution, and saves money that is
typically spent on product reprocessing.
 Introduction
• The systematic consideration of design performance with respect to
environmental, health, and safety objectives over the full product life cycle
• The systemic integration of environmental performance throughout the product life
cycle in the conceptualization and planning of a product.
Design for environmental manufacturing

• Non-toxic processes & production materials

• Minimum energy utilization
• Minimize emissions
• Minimize waste, scrap & by-products
 Design for environmental packaging

• Minimum of packaging materials

• Reusable pallets, totes and packaging 
• Recyclable packaging materials
• Bio-degradable packaging materials
Design for disposal & recycleability
• Re-use / refurbishment of components & assemblies
• Material selection to enable re-use (e.g., thermoset plastics vs.
thermoplastics) and minimize toxicity
• Avoids filler material in plastics such as fiberglass and graphite
• Minimum number of materials / colors to facilitate separating materials and
re-use
• Material identification to facilitate re-use
• Design to enable materials to be easily separated
• Design for disassembly (e.g., fracture points, fastening vs. bonding)
• Avoid use of adhesives
• Limit contaminants - additives, coatings, metal plating of plastics, etc.
• Maximize use of recycled or ground material with virgin material
• Design for serviceability to minimize disposal of non-working products
 Design for disassembly
• To support design for recyclability,
design for disassembly needs to be
addressed. Design for disassembly
enhances maintainability or
serviceability of a product, and it
enables recycling of materials,
component parts, assemblies, and
modules. There are a number of
principles to facilitate disassembly:
• Provide ready access to parts, fasteners,
etc. to support disassembly.
• Design modular products to enable
modules to be disassembled for service
or re-use.
• Minimize weight of individual parts and
modules to facilitate disassembly.
• Use joining and fastening techniques to
facilitate disassembly (e.g., fasteners
instead of adhesives)
• Minimize fragile parts and leads to
enable re-use and re-assembly.
• Use connectors instead of hard-wired
connections.
• Design to enable use of common hand
tools for disassembly.
• BMW's 1991 Z1 Roadster, whose plastic side panels come apart like
the halves of a walnut shell, is an example of a car designed for
disassembly. One of the lessons learned, is that glue or solder in
bumpers should be replaced with fasteners so that the bumpers can
come apart more easily and the materials can be recycled. BMW is
also changing instrument panels. In the past they were made of an
assortment of synthetics glued together. Now BMW uses variations of
polyurethane, foam, and rubber so the panel can be recycled. The
portion of a car recycled is 80% by weight and BMW is aiming for 95%.
 Things to be Considered
• Materials
• Energy Consumption
• Making A Product
Recyclable
• Reuse/Refurbishment
• Increasing Product Lifetime
Materials
• When designing a product under DFE standards, the designer must first take into consideration what materials should be used.
Using recycled or natural materials is a good thing, but these are not always the best choice(some recycled or natural materials
cannot be easily recycled once they are made into a product). An example of this would be that “the production of 1 kg of wood
causes less emissions than the production of 1 kg of plastic. But have you thought about the paint to preserve the wood, the
energy needed to dry, the sawing losses? In some products, you would need about ten times as much wood as plastic. Plastics
can often be recycled, wood cannot”. Also when thinking about materials designers want to limit the variety of materials used in
a single product, this makes the product itself more easily recyclable. If less material is used the product itself will weigh less,
meaning that when the product is being shipped the transportation vehicle carrying the item will burn less fuel.
Materials

Standard Steels

High-Strength Steels
Higher-Strength Steels

Maximum-Strength Steels

Maximum-Strength Steels (hot treated)

 Energy Consumption
•Designers and engineers must first consider how the production process of a product will be
powered and then how the product itself will be powered once it is in use. Is it more
beneficial to use batteries or electricity from an outlet to power a product? This is the type of
question that a designer must answer when designing a product. Any sort of appliance with
an automatic shut-off that is used to save energy would be an example of a product with
Design For Environment compatible features.
 Making A Product Recyclable

• Not only is it extremely important to use recyclable materials, but it is also

beneficial to use as few pieces as possible and to make these pieces easy to
disassemble. A limited number of fasteners should be used and many tools should
not be required to take a product apart. If a product’s parts are easy to remove the
greater the chance will be that the recyclable parts will actually be recycled.
 Reuse/Refurbishment
• Some products are
designed to be easily
recycled and refurbished so
that they can be used again.
One example would be the
ink cartridges for a printer.
The cartridges can easily be
removed from the printer
by the user, recycled (in
specific boxes located in
many office supply stores),
refilled with fresh ink, and
put back on store shelves
within a short period of
time. Products like the one
just mentioned meet many
of the guidelines for Design
For Environment products.
 Increasing Product Lifetime
• When the concept of Design For Environment is applied the designers must carefully consider the
best ways to increase the total amount of time that a product is in use. In order to keep a product
in use longer, designers implement certain techniques including but not limited to the following:
making the product itself more durable, making the product upgradeable (meaning that new
programs, applications, or tools can easily be applied/added to a product once it has already been
sold and in use), and making the customer in some way feel attached to the product. The longer a
product is in use, the longer the production of similar products (that could be replacements) is
stalled. This means that energy that would go into production of new products is saved.
 Conclusion
• Quite simply,
Design for
environment (DfE)
attempts to reduce
the impact of
product design
upon the
environment of a
product or service.
It takes into account
the whole life cycle
- going beyond just
the use of recycled
materials or proper
packaging or
disposal.
 Design for Environment (DfE)
Let Air Be Air, Let Water Be Water, Let Land Be Land

JazakALLAH-o-Khaira

By Waqas Ali Tunio (07ME34)

Quaid-e-Awam University of Engineering, Science & Technology, Nawabshah - Pakistan