ABSTRACT
Many sources say that 80 percent of product impacts are determined on the drawing board. This mirrors the rule of thumb that 80 percent of life cycle costs are determined during design. So eco-design is 80/20 thinking in itself, but there is still much that can be done to apply 80/20 thinking in the design process. If an 'ecoproduct' simply swaps one environmental problem for another – such as a cleaning product using unsustainable if natural palm oil instead of oil-derived chemicals – then sustainability improvements are going to be incremental at best. With a little common sense, designers can use the simple 80/20 rules of thumb to make substantial improvements to the environmental performance of their products without the need for a detailed and costly life cycle assessment. Adopting an 80/20 approach to design, P&G developed Ariel Excel Gel from scratch to tackle the critical issues.
