ABSTRACT
Ecodesign recognises that environmental impacts must be considered during the design process, along with all of the usual design criteria. It is simply a variation on the existing process. This chapter explains some of the methods and tools that other designers have found helpful. These are discussed as a series of five steps: assessing environmental impacts, researching the market, running an ideas workshop, selecting design strategies and design the product. The main objective in undertaking an environmental assessment is to identify the areas of greatest environmental impact so that these can be addressed through the design process. Workshops can be a vital tool for generating creative solutions to design problems and at the same time building in ownership of the process across different sections of an organisation. An ideas workshop is useful in the early stages of the design process; however, creative group work can be used at many different stages of the design for environment project.
