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Publications
Department of the Environment and Heritage, 2003
ISBN 0642 54955 9
| Design for Environment (DfE) | Refers to reducing the environmental impacts of products through better design (such as using less toxic components, or making the product easier to disassemble and reuse). |
| Environmental impact | Any change to the environment, whether adverse or beneficial, wholly or partially resulting from an organisation's activities, products or services. |
| Ecologically Sustainable Development (ESD) | ESD is defined in Australia's National Strategy for Ecologically Sustainable Development (1992) as "using, conserving and enhancing the community's resources so that ecological processes, on which life depends, are maintained, and the total quality of life, now and in the future, can be increased." |
| Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) | Where the manufacturers bear substantial physical and/or financial responsibility for the environmental impacts of their products. This includes "upstream" impacts arising from the choice of materials and the manufacturing process, through to "downstream" impacts, from the use and disposal of products. EPR is generally applied to post-consumer wastes that place increasing physical and financial demands on municipal waste management. |
| External costs | Costs to society and/or the environment that are not reflected in market transactions. Pollution represents an external cost because damages associated with it are borne by society as a whole and are not reflected in market transactions. Also referred to as "externalities". |
| Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) | Compilation and evaluation of the inputs, outputs and potential environmental and other impacts of a product system throughout its life cycle. |
| Life cycle costing | The process of assessing the total cost of a product over its life cycle. (This guide uses a narrower form of costing, also usually called life cycle costing, which only covers the direct monetary costs to the purchaser associated with the initial purchase and ongoing consumables, such as energy, etc.) |
| Product stewardship | An approach in which all aspects of the product's life cycle, from production through distribution to consumption and disposal, are subject to environmental management and stakeholder responsibility. The principle of product stewardship seeks to implement environmental management policies that focus on the product rather than on materials or a single stage of its life cycle. |
| Supply chain | The network of participants involved in processes and activities delivering value in the form of products and services to users. |