Every product introduced into the market has some impact on our environment: each is made from raw materials, uses energy, or creates waste. While the focus of the early environmental movement was to mitigate pollution from point sources, the recent, more holistic approach is to examine the design of consumer products and attempt to minimize their environmental impact. Industry now recognizes that it is often profitable and even less expensive to make ecologically sound products.

This research focuses on tools that facilitate timely communication and information transfer between designers and environmental experts, rather than providing techniques that let designers make environmental assessments themselves. Expertise is distributed, allowing each party involved to concentrate on the fields that they know best.