Environmental Impact Test

Why

To investigate the impact of the product on the environment.

How

Environmental impact can be many things: emissions, noise, safety, or waste and designers need to quantify the (un)desirable impact. A product often has to comply with external regulations or norms; companies can also set their own targets. Measure the impact under realistic use circumstances.

Ingredients

• Testing skills.

• Well-defined metrics and targets to assess environmental impact.

• Possible misuse conditions.

Practice

It is common practice to conduct emission and safety tests in the strongly-regulated automotive industry. In other areas like fast-moving consumer goods, regulations are less strict, but companies try to reduce waste for cost or environmental reasons