Preface Sustainable production and consumption can only be achieved if all market actors take their own responsibility. The ultimate goal is therefore taking into account environment in every decision making process by industry, retailers and consumers. This is a steadily growing process that needs to be fostered by sufficient incentives both from the demand as the supply side. The objective of POEM is to establish a systematic drive for continuous improvement of the life cycle environmental performance of products within all sorts of enterprises by integrating environmental aspects in strategic management decisions. The complexity of the decision process involving all environmental aspects means very often an unbridgeable gap for designers.
Designers have to make many decisions especially when designing complex products.
Moreover the results of LCA are mostly not straightforward in favor of one product or material design over the alternative one. Results of LCA have to be interpreted or weighed. The Eco-indicator 95 methodology is an LCA weighing method specially developed for product design. The Eco-indicator 95 methodology is being used very often by designers but is criticized by environmental experts at the same time because some environmental aspects were not accounted for in the method. This method was criticized because there was no clear-cut objective way to define sustainable target levels.