Minimize Material Diversity
Products as diverse as cars, food packaging, computers, and paint all have multiple components. In an automobile, components are made from various plastics, glasses, and metals. Within individual plastics there are various chemical additives, including thermal stabilizers, plasticizers, dyes, and flame-retardants. This diversity becomes an issue when considering end of-useful-life decisions, which determines the ease of disassembly for reuse and recycle. Options for final disposition are increased through up-front designs that minimize material diversity yet accomplish the needed functions.
Examples of Material Diversity
Many engineering disciplines engage in green engineering. This includes sustainable design, life cycle analysis (LCA), pollution prevention, design for the environment (DfE), design for disassembly (DfD), and design for recycling (DfR). As such, green engineering is a subset of sustainable engineering. Green engineering involves four basic approaches to improve processes and products to make them more efficient from an environmental standpoint.