Sustainable product development

Sustainable product development (SPD) is a method for product development that incorporates a Framework for Strategic Sustainable Development (FSSD), also known as The Natural Step (TNS) framework. As the demand for products continues to increase around the world and environmental factors like climate change increasingly affect policies—and thus business—it becomes more and more of a competitive advantage for businesses to consider sustainability aspects early on in the product development process.

SPD is not limited to the actual product development, but also the product design. Green design, which is a part of SPD, has two main goals: the prevention of waste and to minimize environmental impact. Environmental impact involves: deforestation, greenhouse gas emissions, resource/material management, etc. The early stages of design tend to be the areas that effect the environment the worst, the extraction and refining. The SPD originates from the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, the 1987 Brundtland Report, Our Common Future, and the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Improvement. The foremost imperative advantage of sustainable product development is the decrease of a business's natural affect. By making use of renewable and recyclable materials, associations can diminish the sum of pollution and waste they create whereas also utilizing less assets to form the same calibre of items. Aspects such as environmental conservation, saving water and not overusing it, renewable energies, supporting maintainable versatility. Also one of the most important ones is natural resources and making sure that we can also renewable and recyclable materials.