Development of recovery indicators to be used during product design process: method, potentialities and limits

The paper presents a recently developed comprehensive design for recycling methodology. The goal of this method is to assess product design alternatives regarding their suitability for trecovery system performance. The ability of a product to be recovered is evaluated through three types of indicators according to the following criteria: technical, economical and environmental. The method to model a product, the method to model a recovery process and scenarios, and the method to build the indicators are fully expressed. First, the application to a real product leads to encouraging results that could be useful for a product environmental expert. First ideas on the way such a method could be integrated into an ecodesign process and directions for further research are also discussed