The Design for Environment Program is another tool for retail procurement planners to use in support of Triple Bottom Line accounting.

May 1st, 2009

In a continuing effort to provide education for retail procurement professionals in ways to reduce their carbon footprints support triple bottom line accounting and add some meat to their CSR initiatives

The Design for the Environment Program is a United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) program that works to prevent pollution, and the risk pollution presents to humans and the environment.

According to Wikipedia Design for Environment (DfE) is a general concept that refers to a variety of design approaches that attempt to reduce the overall environmental impact of a product, process or service, where environmental impacts are considered across its life cycle. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is employed to forecast the impacts of different (production) alternatives of the product in question, thus being able to choose the environmentally most friendly. Different software tools have been developed to assist designers in finding optimized products (or processes/services). Design for Environment includes several subsidiary approaches, such as Design for Disassembly (to facilitate recycling and source reduction.

Please continue to support triple bottom line and do your part to hold your suppliers accountable to how they design their products and programs for retail and consumer utilization. Ask your procurement solution providers how they work with suppliers on your behalf in this area.

We continue to look forward to and appreciate your comments.

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