From ecodesign products guidelines to materials guidelines for a sustainable product. Qualitative and quantitative multicriteria environmental profile of a material

This paper deals with the development of MATto, a virtual and physical library including more than 500 innovative material samples. The most important feature of this material library is to provide a deep analysis of the perceptual performances and eco-properties of the materials in the database.As far as the material eco-properties are concerned, a study has been carried out and it is aimed at developing a list of ecodesign guidelines to help the material selection; those are derived from the well-known eco-guidelines concept and should be adopted to improve the product life cycle performances.The material selection guidelines described here have been derived from 3 main eco-strategies: use of resources with a low environmental impact, material’s life extension, and environmental ethics and policies. For each material guideline, different quantitative and qualitative parameters/eco-properties have been identified in order to define an environmental multicriteria profile, to describe the material properties and facilitate the choice of the most suitable materials for a green product.The results collected so far in the process of defining the environmental properties of the MATto materials are described in this paper.