The conflict of contradictory environmental targets

Industrial products, green or not, are all compromises between many demands and constraints. Functions and business performance are of course the dominants. In some cases a green transformation has given new products with better performance and also better business opportunities 'Everyone wins'! In these cases the lucky situation occurs that EcoDesign gives benefit both to economy, performance and environment. In other cases there is no such easy transformation. In particular in a short-term perspective, there are many contradictions between performance, economics and environmental priorities. Furthermore, the environmental concern often has contradictory elements. This paper concludes that the information society and the environmental knowledge have reached such a level of development that we now have new opportunities to make use of environmental guidelines as one basis an an many more intelligent compromises between different design priorities.