Environmental regulations in life cycle design activities

The recent issue of Environmental Regulations (in particular: RoHS, WEE and EuP directives) has brought to light the problem of integrating the new requirements, which industrial engineers have to be in compliance with, together with the product development activities. The paper proposes an evaluation method, based on the lifecycle approach, aimed at both: identifying the product's environmental profile, and assessing the product's compliance with environmental requisites stated by the EU directives. The approach developed is addressed especially to small and medium sized companies, which in this first period after the directives issue need easy-to-use gnidelines for the design and development of eco-friendly products.