Environmental Impact Analysis of Plastic Products from a Design View

Plastic products have undoubtedly had a significant impact on the decline of the surrounding environment. How significantly can the environmental impact of a plastic product be reduced by considering its life-time impact early in its life cycle? An approach has been proposed in this research to determine the environmental impacts of a plastic product at the design stage. By implementing basic design rules, this research has proved that there can be a significant reduction in the amount of environmental impacts, while not sacrificing the usability and quality of the product. Overall, different methods of improving the environmental impacts of a product have been investigated and analysed. The research outcome indicates that there is potential improvementin the environmental impacts of plastic products when it is considered in the early design stages.The overall results show that by adopting the redesign approach as proposedin the methodology, a product could have an overall decrease by 30% and 16% in material and manufacturing energy usage and a 23.5% in carbon emissions reduction.l impacts of plastic products when it is considered in the early design stages.