  The aim of this paper is to discuss the current status of ecodesign in the
industry and its future implications for materials. There is today more and
more focus on the environmental impacts of products during their whole life
cycle. In particular, ecodesign aims at integrating environmental aspects
during the product's design process as any other criterion, in order to reduce
the life cycle impacts. Although a lot of product environmental impact
assessment and Design for Environment tools already exist, environmental
aspects are unfortunately rarely routinely integrated into product development
process in the industry. This is mainly due to the fact that current ecodesign
tools are little adapted to designers' practices, requirements and
competencies. After the sequential and DfX paradigms, design of products is
today maturing into Integrated Design, where multiple points of views and
expertise have to be considered at the same time to progressively define the
product.
