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This volume is a technical and operative contribution to the United Nations "Decade on Education for Sustainable Development" (2005-2014), aiding the development of a new generation of designers, responsible and able in the task of designing environmentally sustainable products. The book provides a comprehensive framework and a practical tool to support the design process. This is an important text for those interested in the product development processes.

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Introduction.- Preface and acknowledgement.- Sustainable development and Discontinuity.- Evolution of Sustainability in Design Research and Practice.- Life Cycle Design.- Minimising Material Consumption.- Minimising Energy Consumption Minimising.- Minimising Resources toxicity and harmfulness.- Optimize Renewable and Bio-compatible Resources.- Product Lifetime Optimisation.- Extending the Lifespan of Materials.- Facilitating Disassembly.- Constraints and opportunities for an LCD approach.- Environmental Complexity and Designing Activity.- The Environmental Impact of Products: Life Cycle Assessment.- Environmentally Sustainable Design-orienting Tools.- The MPDS nethod.

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Carlo Vezzoli is Full Professor of Design at the Politecnico di Milano University and within this Institution for 20 years he has been researching and teaching on design for sustainability. Nowadays he holds the courses of product Design for environmental Sustainability and System Design for Sustainability, he is the head of both the research group Design and system Innovation for Sustainability (DIS) and the research lab LeNS_Lab Polimi. He has delivered worldwide (outside Italy) courses and lectures in universities in Africa (Botswana, Kenya, South Africa and Uganda), Asia (China, India, Japan and Thailand); The Americas (Brazil; Colombia and Mexico), and Europe (Estonia, Finland, France, Norway, The Netherlands and United Kingdom).




He presented in international congresses (22 as keynote speeches), in Europe (Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Ireland, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, The Netherlands and United Kingdom), the Americas (Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico and United States), Africa (South Africa, Uganda), and Asia (India and China).

Since 2007 he is founder of the Learning Network on Sustainability which is a worldwide multipolar network of more than 100 design Universities covering all continents, with the aim of diffusing design for sustainability with an open ethos. Nowadays he is coordinating the LeNSin EU funded (Erasmus+ program) 3 years project involving 36 Universities as partners from Mexico, Brazil, South Africa, India, China, United Kingdom, The Netherland, Finland and Italy.


He wrote several books published in English, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and Chinese.

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