TABLE OF CONTENTS 
All human activity has some impact on the environment in which we live. The environment has some capacity to cope with this, so that a certain level of impact can be absorbed without lasting damage. But it is clear that current human activities exceed this threshold with increasing frequency, diminishing the quality of the world in which we now live and threatening the well-being of future generations. The manufacture and use of products, with their associated consumption of materials and energy, are among the culprits. The position is dramatized by the following statement: at a global growth rate of 3% per year we will mine, process, and dispose of more "stuff" in the next 25 years than in the entire history of mankind. Design for the environment is generally interpreted as the effort to adjust our present design methods to correct known, measurable, environmental degradation; the time-scale of this thinking is 10 years or so, an average product's expected life. Design for sustainability is the longer view: that of adaptation to a lifestyle that meets present needs without compromising the needs of future generations. The time-scale here is less clear it is measured in decades or centuries and the adaptation required is much greater. This chapter focuses on the role of materials and processes in achieving design for the environment. Sustainability requires social and political changes that are beyond the scope of this book.
The nature of...
