Designing the perfect green product: SLCA in reverse

Traditional life-cycle assessment begins with a product and examines its environmental impacts throughout its life cycle. An alternative approach is to proceed in reverse: to examine the need that the product is designed to fulfill, to determine the minimal environmental impacts that could be engendered by filling that need, and thereby to design the "perfect green product" for the purpose. This approach, termed reverse life-cycle assessment (RLCA), is demonstrated by examining the environmental impacts attributable to a generic washing machine of current design, and then by reviewing other ways in which the provisioning of clean clothing may be accomplished. RLCA, as used here, is shown to encourage systems thinking and to identify opportunities for innovation in design and in marketing of environmentally-responsible products in ways that would be unlikely to arise from a traditional streamlined LCA (SLCA).