ECODEV

Ecodesign consists in integrating environmental principles in the design and development of a product – or a service – to reduce its environmental impacts, and this, all along its life cycle (i.e. from the extraction of raw materials to its end-of-life). However, while this approach emerged in the late 90s yet, and despite its ability to address up to 80% of the environmental impacts of a product, ecodesign remains poorly deployed across manufacturing industries. Among various reasons (e.g. the economic viability in some cases), the complexity of the required expertise and the lack of tools able to provide some adapted ecodesign guidance to non-experts – especially within SMEs – appear as key factors contributing to this status quo.

However, as the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR) is progressively being deployed in the European Union, and while societal expectations for more circular and sustainable products keep on raising, it seems more than necessary to fill those gaps.

The ECODEV Eurostars project aims at developing a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) providing ecodesign principles to product development teams i.e. from designers, engineers and project managers to purchasers or packaging/logistics experts. 

Relying on an AI model – based on Large Language Model (LLMs) – ECODEV SaaS will be able to analyze ecodesign documents (e.g. eco-labels criteria, regulations, eco-innovation guidelines), extract the ecodesign principles and organize those via a dashboard. In other words, the tool will help manufacturers define an ecodesign action list for their product development projects. Besides of that, it will also provide an AI-enabled query engine providing answers to specific end-users’ questions on eco-design principles.

In this project, LIST brings its expertise in circular economy – especially in ecodesign – and develops the AI model used in ECODEV SaaS.

ECODEV SaaS will help manufacturing companies (especially SMEs) define and follow ecodesign objectives during product development projects. Such a guidance will be complementary to the several existing LCA-based tools which enable to support trade-offs with environmental impacts quantification.       

As a starting point, ECODEV focuses on furniture products, which is an interesting case study notably given the very high majority of SMEs active in this sector in Europe. On the mid- and long-term, ECODEV may also be re-developed for other sectors such as packaging, electronics and textiles.

ECODEV  is supported by two furniture federations (Federlegno Arredo Eventi SPA in Italy and EFIC at EU level) and by two furniture clusters (AMBIT in Spain and Distretto Tecnologico Interni e Design in Italy.)