Building greener products requires putting the environment right in the middle of the product design process. Indeed, that's where 80+% of the impact of the product on the environment are defined. Many companies seem to forget this. Design for the Environment looks at all aspects of the product that may influence the environmental footprint of the product throughout its lifecycle. In our industry this includes:

• Materials included in the product
• Packaging
• Manufacturing Process
• Supply Chain design
• Energy consumption of the product in use
• Reverse logistics routes
• Ease of dismantling for recycling
• Recycling process itself

I will not go through all 8 aspects in detail as this would lead us too far, but I would like to comment on some. Materials is a real interesting one, and as a manufacturer of electronic products we need to constantly justify the decision of using specific products. There is a push for products with lower environmental footprint, and that is the right thing to do. However, this should not be at the detriment of quality, and in some case, substitution products just do not ensure the same quality as the others.

Packaging can affect the environment in two ways. First the size of the packaging and the amount of empty space implies fewer products are transported per pallet, increasing the carbon footprint of each product item. Carefully designing packaging is critical for maximum environmental efficiency. But secondly, the packaging needs to be disposed off, recycled in the best case, so limiting the amount of packaging required helps the environment. And here the only limit is one's imagination as demonstrated by HP winning the Walmart Design Challenge last year.

The third aspect is the manufacturing process itself and although HP manufactures very little product themselves, they establish stringent guidelines on how their contract manufacturers are required to report their Greenhouse Gas emissions amongst others.

The actual use of energy by the finished product is defined at product design time. Ensuring we use low energy consuming components, we develop appropriate cooling to exclude the consumption increase from heating chips. Over their lifetime, our products may be switched on for long periods of time, so any reduction in energy consumption has large implications of the lifecycle of the product. This is the reason why so much attention is placed on this.

One element people often do not think about is making it easy for the product to be taken apart, facilitating recycling. We all look at the ease of mounting the product in the first place, but why would we think about taking it apart? Right at the design of the product it is important to look at its end of life, marking the components to facilitate recognition of the material, avoiding composite pieces with multiple plastics for example, and not coating the products with difficult to recycle paints. Recycling can be a break-even or profitable operation, if products are designed with this step in mind.

Design for the environment is a large subject where many things come to play. It includes concepts such as Design for Supply Chain and Design for Recycling. Yes, taking the environment into account during design makes the process more complex and difficult, but it results in lower manufacturing and supply chain costs as typically less energy is used. It also improves sales as we have an increasing amount of green conscious buyers out there, who, at similar cost, opt for the more environmental friendly product. So, what are you waiting for?