From General to Company-Specific Ecodesign Strategies: Developing Guidelines for Eco-Efficient Product Design Across the Entire Product Portfolio of an Appliance Company

Abstract

Increasing consumer awareness on significant environmental challenges, in addition to forthcoming regulations, is driving domestic appliance manufacturers to adopt an Ecodesign approach to more effectively and significantly reduce the environmental impacts along all of the life cycle phases of their products, minimising energy and material consumption, optimising the life of the product, facilitating recycling, facilitating disassembly, optimising material conservation/renewability, and minimising toxicity. This paper emphasises and discusses the significance of supporting this process by creating a company-specific handbook of guidelines and checklists to design low-environmental-impact products across an entire company’s appliance range. Checklists are design support tools intended to qualitatively assess whether, and to what extent, an Ecodesign guideline has been applied, enabling the evaluation of existing products or newly developed concepts, while also serving to guide and inspire sustainable design decisions. It is argued that these are effective tools in translating eco-efficient design into practice and guiding the whole of product development organisation through a knowledge-based approach. The Handbook of Guidelines to Design Low Environmental Impact Products is the result of a project commissioned by a home appliance company to the LeNSlab (research group on Design and System Innovation for Sustainability) of the Design Department of Politecnico di Milano, elaborated, after preliminary desk research, through a series of activities, interactions, knowledge exchanges, and operative workshops in cooperation with the company team of experts. The handbook contains 7 Ecodesign strategies, 27 sub-strategies, 157 guidelines, and related checklists, to be specific to such a level that they can effectively be applied to all types of company appliances.

1. Introduction

In recent years, awareness of the urgent need to accelerate sustainable solutions across the entire product life cycle has grown significantly. Europe has taken a leading role in driving this transition, implementing a range of policy measures to guide the EU’s shift towards sustainability.

Starting from the 2009 Ecodesign Directive (Directive 2009/125/EC), which mandates that energy-related products in the EU meet minimum environmental and energy efficiency requirements throughout their life cycles, promoting sustainable design, resource efficiency, and reduced environmental impact for some specific and critical product categories [1].

ISO 14006:2020 Environmental Management Systems—Guidelines for Incorporating Ecodesign updates the 2011 version of the same standard, emphasising life cycle thinking and circular economy principles, and integrating Ecodesign into environmental management systems [2].

In the same year, the new Circular Economy Action Plan laid out a forward-looking agenda to foster a cleaner and more competitive Europe, through collaborative efforts with economic stakeholders, consumers, citizens, and civil society organisations [3]. Within this context, the role of sustainable product design has become increasingly crucial. In the Circular Economy Action Plan, it is highlighted that integrating environmental assessments and requirements in the early stages of the design process proves to be much more effective than mitigating potential damages towards the process’s end (end-of-pipe solutions), as, during the planning and design phase of the products, 80 per cent of their environmental impact is determined. In 2024, the EU took a further step with the new Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR), which expands on the previous directive’s principles. The ESPR aims to ensure that, in the coming years, products sold in the EU will be designed for longevity, resource efficiency, and circularity, thus embedding a fully comprehensive approach to environmental sustainability into the core of product design. This regulation enhances the EU’s commitment to sustainable design methods to effectively minimise the environmental impact across all product life cycle stages [4]. By adopting the wide range of Ecodesign requirements listed in the ESPR framework, it is estimated that, by 2030, 132 million tonnes of oil equivalent in primary energy savings can be achieved, which corresponds to roughly 150 billion cubic meters of natural gas [4], in addition to other benefits.

2. Ecodesign for Life Cycle Environmental Impact Reduction

Although substantial advancements have been made at the general framework and regulatory levels, precise procedures that effectively guide and govern the environmental compatibility of products have not yet been effectively consolidated. Product manufacturers still face significant challenges in navigating the complexities of low-environmental-impact design, particularly in enhancing internal competencies and integrating them into conventional product development processes. While academic research in this field has generated a growing body of knowledge over the past few decades, it remains an evolving area of study. Since the second half of the 1990s, the research discipline focused on designing products with low environmental impact across all dimensions has been increasingly defined and developed [5]. During this time, clarity emerged regarding the definition of Environmental Requirements for Industrial Products, coinciding with the introduction of the Ecodesign approach [6], even known as Design for the Environment [7], or Life Cycle Design [8]. A fundamental principle behind Ecodesign is the comprehensive consideration of all stages a product undergoes: “the integration of environmental aspects into product design and development to reduce adverse environmental impacts throughout a product’s life cycle” [2]. Embracing a systemic approach, the environmental focus of Ecodesign aims to minimise material and energy inputs, emissions, and waste, i.e., their environmental impacts across all stages. Alongside the life cycle, a second key approach is the so-called ‘functional unit’, defined as “a quantified performance of the product that is being assessed, to use as a reference unit within an environmental impact assessment of all its life cycle stages [9]. Nowadays, Ecodesign is a research field with a relatively clear theoretical framework, thanks to a considerable body of knowledge and academic publications about how to apply environmental criteria via Ecodesign methods and tools [6,10,11,12,13]. Among the considerable quantity of tools, Ecodesign guidelines (and related checklists) are effective supports for orienting products’ concept designs and following development processes [6], and they should provide specific advice and strategies for reducing impacts.

Despite a maturing theoretical framework around Ecodesign since the 1990s, a consistent critique in the recent literature is the limited operationalisation of Ecodesign tools within specific industrial contexts. This study contributes by addressing this gap through company-specific guideline development across a product portfolio, rather than focusing on a single product category. This distinction is further illustrated in

Table 1. Contribution of this paper in relation to previous studies.

Literature Reference	Scope and Focus	Methodology	Present Study Novel Contribution
Rossi et al. (2022) [14]	Structured company-specific data to improve Ecodesign practice in SMEs	Assessment framework linking internal product data to design decisions	Create actionable handbook and checklists for diverse products, not just data mapping
Suppipat et al. (2022) [15]	Applied Ecodesign to appliances using product-specific rule sets	Focused on energy-related products	Tackle multiple product types and usability across a firm’s product range
Singh and Sarkar (2021) [16]	Selected and tailored effective Ecodesign tools for sustainability	Framework identifying relevant Ecodesign tool criteria	Beyond tool selection, real-world implementation with customised hierarchical checklists
Marconi and Favi (2020) [17]	Ecodesign teaching initiative in industry: LCA-based educational framework for company-specific Ecodesign	Guidelines generated by Product portfolio LCA	Integrate knowledge generation with design practice tools in product development
Rossi et al. (2019) [18]	Structured repository of guidelines, best practices, and training material on Ecodesign	Five-step method to define objectives, assess and acquire knowledge, set strategies, and capitalise learning through designer feedback	Formalisation into a structured handbook ready to be used within development processes
Rossi et al. (2016) [19]	Systematic review of Ecodesign tools implementation barriers	Systematic literature review	Bridge theoretical gaps with practical implementation for companies with low-to-medium maturity in product sustainability
Vezzoli and Sciama (2006) [20]	Product type-specific guidelines: Life Cycle Design-based toolkits	Single-product type guideline	Extend this study to multi-product portfolios

, which compares the present study with recent contributions to the field.

The Ecodesign research community has also advanced in the identification of both the drivers and the best practices through [21] pilot studies [22,23,24] and barriers [25,26,27]. Anyhow, despite the evolution of knowledge in this field, the adoption rate of Ecodesign remains relatively low, and its progress is not meeting the pace needed to make the required societal impact [28]. Further research is therefore needed to further refine Ecodesign tools and improve their implementation in specific reference contexts, ensuring that sustainability is effectively integrated into each phase of the design and development process.

This paper aims to expand knowledge on the process of defining a company-specific set of Ecodesign guidelines and checklists, tailored to the specific technical and environmental requirements of a company operating in the small domestic appliances sector—including products such as toasters, hot beverage brewing systems, portable air conditioners, portable heating systems, and food preparation devices. These products typically involve the use of multiple material types, such as plastics, metals, electronic components, and multi-layered packaging, as well as energy and other resource consumption in use. Finally, at the end of their service life, such appliances commonly contribute to waste streams, including plastic waste, scrap metals, electronic waste, and composite material residues, which are often difficult to separate or recycle efficiently [29]. With all of that said, those products pose specific environmental challenges across their entire life cycles, from raw material acquisition and material processing, to manufacturing and distribution/transportation, to use, to end-of-life. Given these complexities, this study seeks to build the internal cross-functional competencies necessary to integrate a life cycle approach into design and development practices. Furthermore, although this research is grounded in a single case company, the methodology and insights presented are intended to be relevant for organisations across similar product categories and material profiles. This makes the approach relevant beyond the immediate study, contributing to broader industry efforts towards scalable, company-driven sustainable product innovation.

3. Guidelines for Designing a Range of Low-Environmental-Impact Domestic Appliances (SDA)

To build the technical and strategic competencies, in the perspective of life cycle and functional unit approaches, needed for properly embedding environmental criteria in design practices, the appliance company commissioned the LeNSlab—Politecnico di Milano’s research group on Design and System Innovation for Sustainability—to create a handbook outlining Ecodesign guidelines that are specific, yet applicable across the entire product portfolio. The company’s product range includes products to support food preparation and cooking, as well as hot beverage brewing. The handbook aims to support the entire product development community by providing a knowledge-based approach to guide the design of a new generation of eco-efficient products (low environmental impact, together with high economic and competitive value). The Ecodesign handbook contains a series of guidelines and related checklists, elaborated along the project, intended to be an essential and effective design support tool.

Design guidelines are, in fact, rules, principles, and heuristics that are useful for attaining some design objectives [30]. For example, they can guide the creation or conceptualisation of new products, ensuring the design meets specific objectives, all striving to improve environmental sustainability [31]

While general Ecodesign guidelines are broadly applicable to all types of products, they lack effective practical details. For example, in cases where guidelines are hierarchically structured into strategies, sub-strategies, and guidelines, a general one, such as “Minimise material consumption” (strategy), achievable through “reducing the material content of a product” (sub-strategy), and further refined into more detailed advice like “use ribbed structures to enhance structural stiffness” (guideline), can be helpful, but does not specify to the designer where or how this can be applied in a specific product or context. Furthermore, the same guidelines for some product types may not be applicable. To maximise their effectiveness, guidelines should be adapted to specific product attributes and company contexts. This customisation enhances their applicability and fosters the deeper integration of sustainability principles across the development process. Effective Ecodesign guidelines should provide clear and precise directions, identifying design strategies with the highest potential for sustainability impact. Research efforts have, therefore, focused on tailoring general Ecodesign guidelines to specific design phases, such as material selection [32], or to particular product characteristics [33], to ease their application within the product development process. The importance of establishing specific guidelines and checklists for product types is also emphasised in the work detailed in [34]. However, in that paper, the discourse and research development process had different characteristics because they were aimed at one specific product, not a range of products, as in this case.

4. Method for the Development of Company-Specific Ecodesign Guidelines

This paper examines the development of company-specific Ecodesign guidelines and corresponding checklists, emphasising their critical roles in supporting product concept design and development. The proposed framework aims to equip the company’s product development teams with the necessary expertise to effectively and systematically integrate environmental requirements into the design process. The specificity of these guidelines is twofold: they are tailored to the company’s product range, considering its requirements, characteristics and functionalities, while also referring to its most typical and significant environmental impacts.

For an individual product, it is possible to establish strategic priorities based on its specific environmental impact profile over its life cycle, identifying the most effective measures for impact reduction.

However, when addressing an entire product range, variations in environmental performance may arise, even among products with shared characteristics (e.g., energy consumption during use). As a result, strategic priorities or guidelines may need to be adjusted accordingly. In this context, a reliable approach to priority setting is not suitable, though common characteristics can still provide valuable insights that inform the design process. It is also important to note that the potential environmental impact assessment has been analysed through desk research and information provided by the company. The development process followed by the Politecnico researchers and the company’s team of experts in designing the Handbook of Guidelines to Design Low Environmental Impact Products is outlined in Figure 1.

Specifically, the project was carried out in four phases, each distinguished by a clear methodology and well-defined roles, shared between the Politecnico researchers and the company’s team of experts.

Phase 1: The process began with the identification of the company’s team of experts responsible for various product categories within the company’s portfolio. The identified experts organised a detailed product presentation for the researchers from Politecnico to help them understand the features of the current products and explore potential future evolutions. Then, researchers from Politecnico further deepened the study of the company’s product categories with reference to their environmental specifications. This analysis was complemented by desk research, which focused on the environmental impacts of energy-related products (ErPs), as well as ErP Ecodesign best practices and cases, e.g., studying the EU Ecodesign of energy-related products (ErP) directive. This combined approach allowed for a thorough exploration of both the environmental impacts and the compliance requirements for the company’s products.

Phase 2: Based on the outcome of Phase 1, the following seven Ecodesign strategies were identified, derived from general Ecodesign Strategies as defined by Politecnico di Milano:

(1)

Minimise material consumption;

(2)

Minimise energy consumption;

(3)

Minimise material toxicity and harmfulness;

(4)

Optimise material conservation/renewability;

(5)

Optimise product lifespan (lifespan extension, use intensification, reliability);

(6)

Extend material life (Facilitate material recycling, composting, and energy recovery);

(7)

Facilitate disassembly.

Some of the above general Ecodesign strategies have been adapted when useful. For example, the “Extend material life” strategy was redefined as “Facilitate material recycling”, with the former being of specific relevance to the company’s type of products.

For each of the seven company-adapted strategies, a set of sub-strategies was also specified to the company’s range of products, being derived and reordered (following the company’s products’ environmental priorities and characteristics) from general Ecodesign sub-strategies [35]. For example, under the Ecodesign strategy “Optimise product lifespan”, the general sub-strategy “use intensification” was erased, being meaningless for the products of concern. The greatest, most relevant, and most effective level of specification occurred at the level of the guidelines for each sub-strategy. In this case, we can give a general example without referring to the specification, as this was the result of a project commissioned by the company to Politecnico di Milano (under a Non-Disclosure Agreement, NDA), which was produced in part to give the company a competitive advantage.

For example, the general guidelines “Apply ribbed structures to increase structural stiffness”, belonging to the sub-strategy “Minimise material content of the product”, in turn belonging to the strategy “Minimise material consumption”, has been specified as “Apply ribbed structures to increase structural stiffness for components X, Y, and Z”, where X, Y, and Z are identifiable in the range of products that can be effectively improved through this strategy.

Phase 3: Each guideline was accompanied by a dedicated section for the company’s team of experts to provide technical and technological feedback and assess the clarity and relevance of the guidelines. Feedback categories included the following: clear guidelines, unclear guidelines, meaningful guidelines, meaningless guidelines, and other comments/alternative guidelines.

The draft document was subsequently reviewed by each expert of the company’s team, with specific revisions made to address their comments and questions. Politecnico Researchers then consolidated the feedback into a second draft of the Ecodesign-specific guidelines.

At this stage, a workshop was organised to resolve any remaining uncertainties, delve deeper into outstanding technical and critical issues, and, most importantly, to share the results and secure the commitment of the company’s entire team of experts. Based on the workshop’s output, the final Ecodesign-specific guidelines were drafted, and associated checklists were written up and sent to the company’s team of experts for a last revision.

Phase 4: Finally, a handbook was developed to serve as a comprehensive and practical resource. The first section provides a concise introduction to the principles of Ecodesign, offering foundational knowledge on the topic. The second section presents the 154 detailed specific guidelines developed and organised under their relative strategies and sub-strategies (see previous example on strategy 2, with relative sub-strategy).

The third section includes a set of checklists, each corresponding to a specific guideline, i.e., 154 in total. These checklists were designed to qualitatively evaluate the extent to which the guidelines were implemented, with a scoring system indicating whether each guideline was fully followed, partially followed, or not followed.

This structure ensures that the handbook functions as an operational tool, enabling the integration of the guidelines into the product development process, while establishing a mandatory step for assessing compliance.

5. Results

The outcome of this research is a comprehensive and fully operational Ecodesign handbook, specifically tailored to the company’s diverse range of small domestic appliances. This manual goes beyond generic guidelines by offering a structured and hierarchically organised set of seven customised Ecodesign strategies, each broken down into actionable sub-strategies and product-specific design guidelines. Importantly, the handbook integrates a novel checklist-based system for each strategy, translating sustainability objectives into targeted design questions that can be directly applied during concept development and product-detailed design stages.

The process for defining these product category-specific guidelines represents a key innovation of the present study. Rather than relying solely on the existing literature or top–down policies, the strategies were derived through a new methodological approach, combining desktop research, alignment with EU regulations, and deep integration of company-specific knowledge through structured dialogue with internal experts. This co-creation process ensured that the resulting content is technically feasible, environmentally impactful, and directly aligned with real-world product constraints and opportunities. Moreover, following implementation, preliminary internal feedback from cross-functional design teams indicates a notable improvement in Ecodesign integration.

6. Discussion

Unlike previous projects developed by the LeNSlab at Politecnico di Milano in cooperation with product manufacturers [20,35], in which guidelines were specifically tailored for a single product type and originated from a more in-depth analysis of the product, its disassembly, and a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), this paper describes a different approach. Traditional processes of this kind, requiring 6 to 8 months per product type, are often time-intensive and, therefore, are adopted only for a limited portion of the entire range of products. To address this, the decision was made to proceed with Ecodesign guidelines that are specific to the company’s broad range of products, rather than focusing on a single product. This approach also allows for a more scalable and inclusive strategy in promoting sustainable design practices within the whole organisation.

The Ecodesign guideline project originated from the Head of Product Pillar within the Sustainability Steering Committee of the reference company, reflecting a strong commitment to integrating Ecodesign tools and practices into the product development organisation. Successfully embedding this holistic methodology into traditionally linear product development processes requires a sophisticated managerial approach to navigate its inherent complexity [33,36,37] Rotmans and Loorbach assert that it is still possible to influence and shape the evolution of these processes [38], while Yström et al. highlight the pivotal roles of individual change agents in driving organisational transformation [39]. Integrating this holistic methodology into established product development processes demands a cultural shift within the organisation [39,40]. Teams must adopt an iterative and collaborative approach that balances environmental goals with other critical business priorities, such as cost, performance, and aesthetics [41,42]. Additionally, the initial investment in training and process adaptation can be substantial, particularly for large and complex organisations [24].

The Head of Product Pillar’s boundary-spanning role, in addition to the formalisation of the company’s commitment in terms of proactively embracing an Ecodesign approach in the entire product range, enabled direct engagement of the product design organisation. As a result, a series of sessions were organised to systematically implement the company-specific handbook of Ecodesign, with consolidated tailored guidelines and checklists, in selected pilot projects. Through the Life Cycle Design principles [12,34] the handbook provided structured guidance that enabled product developers to discuss and critically evaluate in detail each Ecodesign strategy, sub-strategy and guidelines.

By fostering a cultural shift within the organisation, the handbook encourages teams to adopt iterative and collaborative approaches, balancing environmental goals with traditional business priorities, such as cost and performance. Workshops and sessions were organised to ensure systematic implementation of the guidelines, enhancing team engagement and commitment. This strategy represents a crucial first step, equipping designers with both a foundational understanding and a practical tool that can be applied across multiple product categories.

7. Conclusions

This study makes a significant methodological contribution to Ecodesign research by proposing a replicable, mixed-method approach for the development of company-specific sustainability design guidelines. Unlike prior models, which often apply generic strategies or rely on LCA data alone, this work introduces an integrated framework that combines the following approaches: desktop research on industry regulations, qualitative insights from internal experts across departments, contextual tailoring of general Ecodesign strategies, and sub-strategies and guidelines to match specific product characteristics and their translation into actionable tools (i.e., the same company-specific guidelines and a related set of structured checklists as qualitative evaluation criteria) embedded into real-world design processes.

This co-creation approach bridges the gap between high-level environmental design principles and daily design practice by operationalising sustainability in a structured and participatory way.

Despite the methodological contributions and practical relevance of the present study, the following limitations must be acknowledged:

• Generalised scope: The guidelines developed are intentionally broad, to address a wide range of products, which limits their specificity and depth compared to one single product-specific Ecodesign approach.
• Lack of product-level detail: Unlike previous projects, which used the detailed disassembly and LCA of individual products, this approach does not offer tailored recommendations for each product type.
• Context-specific scope: As this study was developed within a single home appliance company, a broader application across other industries is needed to evaluate the framework’s generalisability.
• Lack of longitudinal impact assessment: This study does not include empirical data measuring the environmental or organisational impacts of the implemented handbook over time. Without longitudinal evaluation, the level of effectiveness of the tool in achieving sustained Ecodesign performance improvements remains to be assessed.
• Limited exploration of behavioural and organisational change factors: While the framework was implemented with executive support, this study does not systematically explore the behavioural, managerial, or cultural variables that mediate the successful adoption of Ecodesign tools within design teams.

Future research should focus on extending the proposed framework to different industries, enabling cross-sectoral validation of its applicability to various product types, market dynamics, and sustainability priorities. Additionally, future studies could explore the integration of more detailed product-level analysis, including disassembly and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), to provide specific recommendations for individual products. Incorporating quantifiable environmental impact assessments will also enhance the effectiveness of the guidelines by demonstrating measurable sustainability improvements. Longitudinal studies are essential to evaluating the long-term impact of the Ecodesign handbook on both environmental performance and organisational culture. Furthermore, investigating the behavioural and organisational factors influencing the adoption and sustained integration of Ecodesign tools would provide valuable insights into overcoming potential barriers to successful implementation.