Barriers for a successful integration of environmental aspects in product design

Product development is becoming a more and more important part of the environmental management system of companies. Integrating environmental aspects in early planning stages promises to both improve the environmental performance and customer benefit of products. However, most companies haven't gone that far yet. They still encounter various barriers implementing environmentally conscious design. The main difficulty is seen in the poorly developed interface between environmental management and R&D. This paper presents an extended interpretation of an earlier survey conducted at the Institute for Industrial Engineering and Management (1998). It is supported by the findings from a discussion group with 20 environmental managers and shows the main barriers for integration. In addition to this analysis, the outline and preliminary result of the ongoing research is shown. It focuses on the interface of environmental management and R&D taking evidence from different case studies.