Sustainable Design Certification

What sustainable design technique reduces the toxicity and pollution of raw materials at their source?

Green chemistry

What factors are important when selecting an appropriate material?

Procurement and processing costs, environmental impacts, form, function, and engineering characteristics

How can you verify environmental results from SOLIDWORKS Sustainability for marketing purposes?

Perform a full life-cycle assessment (LCA) to verify and supplement the screening-level results.

What is one benefit of using intuition for environmental impact assessment?

Identifying simple improvements, such as making a product lighter or more energy efficient.

What does weighting multiple environmental impact factors together rely on?

Societal or cultural values regarding the relative importance of different environmental impacts.

What is an appropriate functional unit for laundry detergent in an LCA?

Washing a specified amount of laundry to a defined cleanliness level.

What is the broadest conventional scope of a life-cycle assessment?

Cradle-to-grave LCA.

What three things must be considered when performing an environmental assessment?

Environmental impacts, scope of the assessment, and metrics to be used.

Why are toxicity indicators difficult to measure in LCAs?

Toxicity models have uncertainty and limitations in predicting real-world impacts.

What can the results of a product environmental assessment be compared against?

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

What does LCA stand for?

Life-cycle assessment.

Why is LCA considered an approximate and pragmatic assessment method?

LCA uses models, assumptions, and available data to estimate environmental impacts rather than measuring every impact exactly.

Why might manufacturing a product locally increase its environmental impacts compared with manufacturing it in a distant region?

The local electricity grid mix or transportation fuel may be dirtier than those in the distant region.

What is a drawback of single-score or single-proxy LCAs?

They can be less transparent than multiple-factor LCAs.

During which stage of a full LCA are classification and characterization performed?

Life-cycle impact assessment (LCIA).

What sustainable design technique uses inspiration from nature and technologies found in nature?

Biomimicry.

Who should you emphasize manufacturing waste reduction and energy efficiency to when communicating sustainability efforts?

Engineering managers.

What does an environmental indicator measured in kg CO₂ equivalent represent?

Greenhouse gas emissions expressed relative to CO₂ using global warming potential equivalency factors.

What does a Level 3 redesign require?

A systemic change.

What is an example of a reactive environmental action rather than a company's long-term sustainability vision?

Following current environmental regulations.

What sustainable design technique promotes partnerships across companies to reduce impacts over a product's life cycle, especially at end of life?

Product stewardship / extended producer responsibility (EPR).

What environmental impact is measured by the global warming potential (GWP) of greenhouse gases?

Climate change.

True or false: Numerical results from a screening-level LCA such as SOLIDWORKS Sustainability can automatically be used in public marketing materials.

False. Appropriate verification and substantiation are needed.

What sustainable design concept is characterized by the idea that one entity's waste becomes another entity's food?

Cradle to cradle.

To whom should you communicate product sustainability using green marketing claims and eco-labels?

Suppliers, customers, and the general public.

Which of these answers is an example of green marketing?

A product label that indicates the carbon footprint reduction of this product.

Which ONE of these goals is a reactive environmental action, rather than part of a company's long-term sustainability vision?

Following current environmental regulations.

What does a "level 3" redesign require?

A systemic change.

TRUE or FALSE: The numerical results of a screening-level LCA, such as SolidWorks Sustainability, can legitimately be used in marketing collateral to the general public.

TRUE

What environmental impact is measured by the "global warming potential" (GWP) of greenhouse gases, such as CO₂, emitted throughout a product's life cycle?

Climate change.

What is the name of the sustainable design technique that promotes voluntary partnerships across companies to help manage and reduce impacts over a product's entire life cycle, especially end-of-life considerations?

Product stewardship / Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR).

What is the sustainable design technique that can be used to reduce the toxicity and pollution of raw materials at their source?

Green chemistry

Which of the following is an important consideration for selecting an appropriate material?

All of these

You have found a greener design alternative using a lifecycle-based design assessment such as SolidWorks Sustainability. How can you VERIFY these environmental results with enough certainty for marketing purposes?

You should verify the results with a full LCA to supplement your screening-level LCA

Using intuition for environmental impact assessment has many drawbacks, but which of the following is one possible benefit?

Identifying simple, common solutions, such as making a product lighter or more energy-efficient

What does weighting, which can be used to combine multiple environmental impact factors together, rely on?

Societal or cultural values about the relative importance of impacts to individual users

Which of the following could be used to describe the functional unit for laundry detergent in an Environmental Assessment study?

A product that washes an equivalent to 25 loads of clothes.

What is the most broadly scoped Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)?

Cradle-to-grave LCA

What are the three things you need to consider to perform an Environmental Assessment?

Environmental impacts, scope of the assessment, metrics to be used

LCAs, including both screening-level and full LCAs, do not easily measure toxicity indicators because:

Current toxicity models poorly predict real impacts, and shouldn't be used to make product decisions

The results from a product Environmental Assessment can be compared to:

All of these can be used as comparisons

What is the “Scope” of an Environmental Assessment that is performed using Intuition?

Usually more visible life cycle stages, such as packaging and transportation

To be considered a “Level 2 (fundamentally altering the product)” redesign for a gasoline-powered automobile, what could you replace it with?

A gasoline-electric hybrid: radically higher efficiency, but still uses gas stations and roads

LCA stands for:

Life Cycle Assessment, because LCA is an approximate and pragmatic method, like medicine

You decide to manufacture a product locally rather than manufacturing it in a distant region and shipping it here, but you find that this change actually makes the impacts go up. What is one possible reason for this increase?

The electric grid mix and transportation fuel in the local region is dirtier than in the distant region.

Which of the following is (or are) drawback(s) of “single-score” or “single proxy” LCAs?

All of these

In which step of a full LCA would you perform Classification (grouping each material and energy flow into an impact category) and Characterization (converting these categories into comparable environmental impacts)?

Impact Assessment

What is the name of the sustainable design technique that uses natural inspiration and technologies found in nature?

Biomimicry

To whom would you emphasize decreasing material waste and increasing energy efficiency of your manufacturing process, when trying to communicate your sustainability efforts?

Engineering Manager

What does it mean if an environmental indicator is listed as having units of “kg CO2 (equivalent)”?

Measured greenhouse-gas emissions related to CO2, multiplied by their Global Warming Potential equivalency factors