Eco-designing products and services with edTOOL®

Consumers play a key role in the success of products and services in the market. As they become more aware of the environmental consequences of their actions, the demand for environmentally friendlier products increases. As a result, companies are integrating eco-design principles into their products in order to decrease their environmental impacts and increase their competitiveness. However, this is a challenging process, as the application of eco-design is not straightforward.

With this problem in mind, Sostenipra and inèdit innovació created the edTOOL® software (access at http://edtool.sostenipra.cat), which is available in English and French. Currently, inèdit innovació, which is a spin-off from Sostenipra and UAB Research Park, provides technical support and upgrades the software with new adaptations.

This tool aims to help and guide companies through the eco-design process. It has five steps, i.e., initial definition of the product, market study, environmental assessment through the Qualitative Assessment of Life Cycle Criteria (QALCC), eco-design strategy selection and generation of a summary report. A product panel is created at the beginning of the process, which is composed of representatives of different departments of the company (e.g., environmental technician, designer, manager, accountant, etc.) and potential external agents. This panel is responsible for evaluating the product, identifying hotspots and selecting eco-design strategies to be implemented according to their social, technical and environmental feasibility.

To date, edTOOL® already has 416 registered users from around Europe and is being applied in different production sectors. In fact, we detected the need to adapt this tool to different sectors, given that the improvement strategies might vary. The first adaptation is already available: edTOOL®furniture (access at http://edtoolmueble.sostenipra.eu/). This tool is the result of successfully applying edTOOL® to the wood and furniture sector. This is the first step towards a widespread integration of eco-design practices into the production of goods and services.