The Ecolizer

The Ecolizer is OVAM's unique eco-design tool. It is intended to be used by designers and companies that are seeking to estimate the environmental impact of the products they design.

OVAM has developed this instrument  in order to make eco-design more accessible for designers. There are many other methods and instruments that help implement eco-design but they are not as user-friendly and often involve advanced but complex methods that demand a great deal of expertise from the user. The flow of this academic information to the world of design is, however, limited and even where it is available, it is not often used.

The Ecolizer 2.0 uses the new ReCiPe method. This indicator (expressed in eco-points) captures the environmental impact of both materials and processes in a single figure. The indicators are a simple but reliable source of information for making decisions and integrating eco-design into the design process in a user-friendly way and make it easy for a designer to make an environmental assessment for one or various product proposals. The Ecolizer allows for a quick and simple environmental assessment of the various materials and production processes used.

Why the focus on designers? When designing a product, they establish various parameters that will determine the environmental impact of the product throughout its life cycle. A poll of designers' needs by OVAM demonstrated that, on the one hand, they are open to eco-design and enjoy discovering other perspectives and design methods but, on the other, they have little time to invest in this as a result of strong competition. This hinders the introduction of intensive eco-design methods. It should be noted that the Ecolizer can be used quickly and without a great deal of prior knowledge. And, since eco-design begins on the design table, we would like the Ecolizer to become a tool that can also be used when designs are still at the drawing stage. For this reason, a software application was deliberately not chosen in the first instance.