Eco Screening : Framtagning av ett verktyg för kartläggning och utvärdering av produkters miljöbelastning vid ÅF EcoDesign Center

Sammanfattning: The report describes an ecodesign thesis performed by the author at the ÅF EcoDesign Center. The basic idea of ecodesign is to develop products with a minimized environmental load, without neglecting other significant product aspects such as function and price. During the last couple of years the public interest in environmental friendly products has increased, which has made it possible for companies to make a profit from their investments in ecodesign. To meet the increasing market for ecodesign services ÅF started the ÅF EcoDesign Center, where the company has gathered all of their competence in ecodesign in order to help companies to become greener. The task was to develop a tool for an Eco Screening. An Eco Screening is one of ÅFs services which leads to an identification and evaluation of the environmental impact of a product. By use of the tool the environmentally damaging factors of the product are identified and an indication of the product's biggest environmental impact is obtained. During the thesis work a process for the Eco Screening was defined. The process then was broken down into phases and activities, after which material to support the implementation of the activities was developed. The material consists of anything from a question bank to ensure the collection of right information, document and report templates, criteria for evaluation of products, etc. A concept for a web-based tool that collects all the information about an Eco Screening project was developed. By initially developing the material needed to carry out an Eco Screening and integrate it into the tool, it is hoped that future Eco Screening projects should be facilitated. ÅF plans to develop the web-based tool in spring 2009, and then continue the process to test, evaluate and refine the tool further. During the thesis work the concept of the tool was tested and evaluated by performing an Eco Screening in a medical technology company in the Stockholm area. During the test the developed process and the material produced were used. The test was successful. The tool proved to work as expected and the medical technology company was very satisfied with the Eco Screening.