Connotations of Ecodesign: A Commentary on the State of Discourse

Design, as a process of realizing a planned change, operates on specifications from the normative requirements and constraints emanating from the context of realizing the solution. The concept of ecodesign deals with principles that ensure a desirable state of the environment by appropriate design of products or solutions. There is a growing body of literature on ecodesign. However, perusal of the publications on the operational aspects of ecodesign points to a lack of rigour in qualifying ecodesign. This prompted the authors of this work to study the state of the discourse on ecodesign from the perspective of connotations of the term among engineering designers. The observations based on the scrutiny of the definitions of the term ecodesign from papers published in the years 2016 and 2015 in the Journal of Cleaner Production point to an undesirable situation of conveniently adapting interpretations of ecodesign to suit the design constraints sans justification and validation.