Preventive environmental strategies for product systems

The paper describes a model for environmental quality and resource efficiency parameters to be used in evaluation of options for improvement of product systems in a life cycle and system perspective. Four main preventive strategies for product system improvements are described and discussed in the paper. (1) Reformulating user needs and requirements to the system; (2) improvement of product system performance; (3) substitution of the whole product systems or system components on different levels; (4) optimization within and between system units and components. These main strategies are discussed with respect to the structure of the product system (the domain theory), and with respect to efficiency in general. It is concluded that at present, it is not possible to make any definite rank of priorities between the different strategies, but that this should be evaluated when more systematic studies of cases are available.