Designing products that are never discarded

摘要

With new environmental directives, manufacturers become responsible for the disposal of their products at the end of their life. These new constraints imply new costs to take into account in the product definition. So, for manufacturers, designing products, which are never discarded, is not a utopia, but one more objective to reach during the design process of the products. In fact, to control end of life costs, manufacturers have to develop new end of life strategies to increase the economic interest. But, end of life considerations are not sufficient, environmental aspects have also to be respected during the product life cycle. These new objectives imply major changes during the design of the products: A real use of the concept of product life cycle, in order to build product life cycle scenarios that correspond to economic, environmental and society needs, this in a sustainable logic of development. The construction of expertise specific to the various scenarios which can appear, in order to help products designers to integrate the new life cycle constraints related to the new types of consumption, to new supply chains, to new technologies... In this article, we will present researches that we currently carry out in order to help this concept of "products, which are never discarded" to emerge.