Sustainable Design Certification 2

What are the main stages of a product life cycle?

Raw material extraction, material processing, part manufacturing, assembly, product use, and end of life.

What does FSC stand for?

Forest Stewardship Council.

What does EPEAT stand for?

Electronic Product Environment Assessment Tool.

What does EPD stand for?

Environmental Product Declarations.

What does EMS stand for?

Environmental Management System.

What does DfD stand for?

Design for Disassembly.

What does DfE stand for?

Design for Environment.

What does EPR stand for?

Extended Product Responsibility.

What does GHG stand for?

Greenhouse Gas.

What does LCA stand for?

Life Cycle Assessment.

What does LCIA stand for?

Life Cycle Impact Assessment.

What are four reasons to design for sustainability?

Personal interest, professional growth, company intent, and industry regulations.

What is the definition of sustainable development?

Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

What are the three dimensions of sustainability?

Environment, society (equity), and economy.

What is a sustainable company?

A company that balances economic, social, and environmental responsibility.

What are the three goals of a truly sustainable company?

Minimize extracted materials by using waste as input, eliminate unusable waste, and minimize energy use while using renewable sources.

What is the Triple Bottom Line?

People, Planet, and Profit.

At what four business levels can sustainability be implemented?

Strategy, supply chain and values, operations, and product development and design.

What is Design for Disassembly (DfD)?

Designing products for easy disassembly and recovery of components at the end of their useful life.

What is Design for Environment (DfE)?

Designing products to decrease pollution and associated human and environmental risks.

What is Product Stewardship?

Shared responsibility among everyone involved in a product's life cycle to reduce its environmental impact.

What is another name for Product Stewardship?

Extended Product Responsibility (EPR).

What does Cradle to Cradle mean?

Considering what happens to products and materials after use, especially recycling and reuse, rather than treating disposal as the final stage.

Considering what happens to products and materials after use, especially recycling and reuse, rather than treating disposal as the final stage.

Designing materials, processes, or products inspired by living organisms.

What are the two approaches to Biomimicry?

Challenge to biology and biology to challenge.

What is Green Chemistry?

Reducing the generation and use of hazardous chemicals and preventing pollution at its source.

What is the preferred hierarchy for managing chemical hazards?

Source reduction/prevention, reuse/recycling, treatment, and disposal with the least environmental impact.

When should sustainability be considered during product development?

As early in the design stage as possible.

Why is sustainable design considered relative?

Because every product has an environmental impact. Products can only be more sustainable compared with alternatives.

What can a product's environmental impact be compared against?

Previous versions, alternative designs, benchmarks, or impact goals.

Why is a common functional unit needed when comparing products?

To compare products based on a consistent measure of the function they perform.

What are the three main choices when evaluating environmental impacts?

Environmental indicators, scope, and metrics.

What are the five main categories of environmental impact?

Natural resource depletion, air impact, terrestrial and aquatic impacts, climate effects, and human health.

What are examples of natural resource depletion?

Water use, mineral extraction, land occupation/use, and non-renewable energy.

What are examples of air impacts?

Air acidification, photochemical oxidation (smog), and ozone layer depletion.

What are examples of terrestrial and aquatic impacts?

Water eutrophication, aquatic ecotoxicity, and terrestrial ecotoxicity.

What is the primary climate effect listed in the PDF?

Global warming.

What are examples of human health impacts?

Human toxicity, respiratory inorganics, and ionizing radiation.

What is meant by the scope of an environmental assessment?

The product life cycle stages and system boundaries included in the assessment.

What does Cradle to Grave mean?

An assessment covering all phases from raw material extraction through disposal.

What does Cradle to Cradle mean in an LCA system boundary?

An assessment similar to cradle to grave that also tracks materials after use, with attention to recycling and reuse.

What does Cradle to Gate mean?

An assessment covering upstream life cycle stages through a defined gate, commonly the factory gate, excluding later stages.

What does Gate to Gate mean?

A narrowly scoped assessment focused on one stage or a set of stages within the product life cycle.

What are the four types of assessment metrics listed in the PDF?

Comments, checkmarks, scores, and measurements.

What are some examples of LCA tools?

GaBi, SimaPro, TEAM, BEES, Umberto, ECO-IT, Excel, and MATLAB.

What does weighting do in an environmental impact assessment?

Assigns relative importance to different environmental impact categories when combining or comparing results.

What are the six approaches to sustainable design assessment, from least to most rigorous?

Engineering intuition, product scorecards, conceptual life cycle thinking, qualitative LCA, life cycle-based design assessment, and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA).

What is a limitation of engineering intuition?

Designers may overlook counterintuitive trade-offs and unknown environmental costs.

What are product scorecards?

Assessment tools that focus on product attributes rather than the entire product life cycle.

What is conceptual life cycle thinking?

An approach that considers the product life cycle using qualitative evaluations.

What does LiDS stand for?

Life Cycle Design Strategies.

How is the LiDS tool represented?

An eight-axis radar chart.

What is qualitative Life Cycle Assessment?

An approach that evaluates environmental impacts at each life cycle stage and overall, using company-selected ratings.

What is life cycle-based design assessment?

A more quantitative environmental assessment approach used during the design stage.

What is an example of an industry-specific life cycle-based design assessment tool?

COMPASS.

What does COMPASS stand for?

Comparative Packaging Assessment.

What are the three main categories evaluated by COMPASS?

Consumption metrics, emission metrics, and packaging attributes.

What is an example of an industry-agnostic life cycle-based design assessment tool?

SolidWorks Sustainability.

What are the four environmental impact indicators shown by SolidWorks Sustainability?

Non-renewable life cycle energy demand, air acidification, water eutrophication, and carbon footprint.

What is the main advantage of integrating sustainability analysis into SolidWorks?

It enables real-time environmental impact analysis during the design process.

What is Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)?

An objective, standardized process that evaluates the environmental burdens of a product, process, or activity.

Which ISO standards specifically address Life Cycle Assessment?

ISO 14040:2006 and ISO 14044:2006.

What are the four major steps of the standardized LCA process?

Goal and scope definition, Life Cycle Inventory (LCI), Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA), and data interpretation.

What are the common comparisons used to interpret environmental assessment results?

Standards, previous designs, competitive products, and alternative designs.

Rank the four transportation methods from highest to lowest environmental impact as presented in the PDF.

Air transport, truck transport, rail transport, and ship transport.

What four criteria should engineers consider when selecting materials?

Function, aesthetic/ergonomic/form requirements, cost, and minimized environmental impacts.

What is the focus of Level 1 Sustainable Design Strategies?

Product design and parametric optimization, including alternative material selection, sourcing locally, and lightweighting.

What is the focus of Level 2 Sustainable Design Strategies?

Product development by fundamentally altering the product.

What is the focus of Level 3 Sustainable Design Strategies?

Product innovation by changing the system, such as replacing disposable cups with reusable metal cups.

To which four groups should sustainability results be communicated?

Designers and engineers, general management, other parts of the supply chain, and sales and marketing.