Product design material cycle development

LCA has been most widely applied to products. One objective has been to establish which product is the most environmentally friendly for a particular function. Another objective has been to determine which part of a product s life cycle incurs the greatest environmental burden as a precursor to sourcing alternative raw materials, developing improved processing technology, or improving product design. Product functions can be compared related to those objectives ... 

A great challenge in the design of products that are easy to recycle is seen in the development of eco-friendly products. Waste should be avoided both in the production process and when disposing of products. In addition, material substance should, at the end of product life, be suitable to be returned into the material cycle (recycling). This is also true of making textiles and, in particular, of technical textiles. 

Bioplastics are still in their early stage of development [35]. They are produced on a small scale or in singular facilities, meaning that transport, conversion, product design and final disposal are not optimised. They are, however, quite often compared with mature materials whose life cycles have been optimised over several decades. This may lead to a biased comparison. The optimisation and improvement potential for bioplastics is huge and includes ... 

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