Improving ecological performance of design processes accounting for product life cycle

Abstract

To preserve favourable environment and natural resources with a high rate of technical development, a large-scale transition from anthropocentric positions to ecocentric ones in all spheres of economic activity, especially, at the design stage of new products is required as the decisions determining the necessary material base for the creation of products and having multiplicative effect of impact on the environment are made. The new approaches to improve ecological performance of design processes accounting for the product life cycle were offered. The methods for assessing ecological safety of created products from the perspective of full ecological responsibility aimed at improving ecological safety of products in the life cycle and minimizing negative impact on abiotic resources were developed; these methods enable to set implicative dependences of engineering and ecological parameters and control over them to improve ecological performance of design processes. The comprehensive ecological criteria for assessing ecological safety of technical products at the design stage based on the regressional dependences of ecological and engineering parameters of created products, algorithms and criteria for ecological safety of materials were given. The offered analysis methodology and methods for assessing ecological safety in the design by various ecological parameters can be used to study any engineering system being created.