Recently, The EU and other advanced countries are strengthening the environmental regulations on products, such as the Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive (RoHS) in the manufacture of various types of electronic and electrical equipment, and the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive (WEEE) which sets collection, recycling and recovery targets for electrical goods. In particular, as the EU implemented eco-design requirements for Energy-using Products (EuP), the environmental performance enhancement of products is newly emerging as a major task to secure the competitiveness of our industrial field. Considering the rapid increase in domestic demand for environmentally friendly products, now is the time to stress the development and manufacturing of sound environmentally friendly products.

Usually, it is said that 70 ~80% of a product’s environmental stress is decided in the stage of product design. Therefore, in order to improve the environment, it is essential to take the environment into consideration from the earliest design stage of a product. In this respect, eco-design is one of the policy methods of environmental pollution prevention used to facilitate the development and manufacturing of environmentally and economically sound products by considering their environmental impacts as part of the design process.