Sustainability

The results from a product Environmental Assessment can be compared to:

-Standards -Previous or alternative designs -Competitive benchmarks

What does a "level 3" redesign require?

A systemic change

What do the following describe about a product? Raw material extraction, Material processing, Part manufacturing, Assembly, Transportation, Product use, End of life

Cradle-to-grave LCA

What is the most broadly scoped Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)?

Cradle-to-grave LCA

Which of the following design changes is a "Level 1 (parametric optimization)" redesign?

Creating a thinner-walled plastic bottle that serves the same intended purpose

LCA's, including both screening level and full LCAs, do not easily measure toxicity indicators because:

Current toxicity models poorly predict real impacts, and shouldn't be used to make product decisions

What is the name of the sustainable design technique that helps you to make a product more recyclable?

Design for Disassembly (DfD)

You have found a greener design alternative using a lifecycle-based design assessment such as SolidWorks Sustainability. How can you VERIFY these environmental results with enough certainty for marketing purposes?

You should verify the results with a full LCA to supplement your screening-level LCA

What is the correct order of the options available when choosing the "Metrics" in an Environmental Assessment, in order of increasing accuracy?

comments, checkmarks, scores, measurements

To be considered a "Level 2(fundamentally altering the product)" redesign for a gasoline-powered automobile, what could you replace it with?

A gasoline-electric hybrid radically higher efficiency, but still uses gas stations and roads

What are the three things you need to consider to perform an Environmental Assessment?

Carbon footprint, water use, toxicity

What environmental impact is measured by the "global warming potential" (GWP) of greenhouse gases, such as CO2, emitted throughout a product's life cycle?

Climate change

The study of sustainable development broadly covers these three elements:

Environment, social equity, economics

Which ONE of these goals is a reactive environmental action, rather than part of a company's long-term sustainability vision?

Following current environmental regulations

What is the sustainable design technique that can be used to reduce the toxicity and pollution of raw materials at their source?

Green Chemistry

Using intuition for environmental impact assessment has many drawbacks, but which of the following is one possible benefit?

Identifying a "natural" solution to a problem, which is almost always more sustainable

In which step of a full LCA would you create a list of all the materials and processes of your product's life cycle that fall within the defined system boundary?

Impact Assessment

In which step of a full LCA would you perform Classification (grouping each material and energy flow into an impact category) and Characterization (converting these categories into comparable environmental impacts)?

Impact Assessment

What is the better choice: using sustainably grown bamboo from far away, or using sustainably harvested old growth oak hardwood from local forests?

Make the best decision possible with the tools at hand and be trans parent about your assumptions and methodology

To whom would you emphasize the cost savings, or cost-benefit tradeoffs, of your sustainable design decisions, when trying to communicate your sustainability efforts?

Marketers

In which domain should we group environmental impacts such as water eutrophication and terrestrial ecotoxicity?

Natural resource depletion

What is the "Scope" of an Environmental Assessment that is performed using Intuition?

None of these (are the answer)

The choice of "impacts" for an Environmental Assessment performed using Conceptual Life Cycle Thinking is:

Only climate change impact (carbon footprint)

What is an example of a tool that performs a Lifecycle Based Design Assessment that is not specific to any one industry?

SolidWorks Sustainability

Environmental Product Declarations, or EPDs, are an increasingly used method for communicating sustainability results with:

Suppliers and Customers

"The intelligent application of the principles of sustainability to the realm of engineering and design" is a working definition for the following concept:

Sustainable business

What is the most common definition of sustainable development, articulated by the Brundtland Commission?

Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

What does weighting, which can be used to combine multiple environmental impact factors together, rely on?

Tested scientific theories about the relative importance of impacts

You decide to manufacture a product locally rather than manufacturing it in a distant region and shipping it here, but you find that this change actually makes the impacts go up. What is one possible reason for this increase?

The electric grid mix and transportation fuel in the local region is dirtier than in the distant region

Which of the following might be a good reason to use a Product Scorecard?

To guide early designers engaging in concept development on a wide variety of products