How can patent-based prospective life cycle assessment be used for eco-design?

Abstract Over the years, eco-design methods increasingly refer to the product conceptualization phase, guaranteeing increasingly sustainable results. To move in this phase in the most strategic way, it is necessary to seek solutions related to design interventions and reliably select the most sustainable options. This study proposes a new method to actively use the prospective LCA in eco-design, for the identification and evaluation of solutions to solve an environmental problem, defined at the detail level of design features. Both the solutions and the data needed to evaluate their environmental impacts prospectively are extracted from patents through a systematic procedure, ensuring compliance with the quality and reliability requirements prescribed by the ISO 14040 and ISO 14044 standards. The more general result highlighted by the case study is the comparison between prospective LCA and eco-design, from which it emerges how the former can actively support design rather than merely evaluating existing solutions. In patents, solutions at the level of detail of design features and technical parameters can actually be found and evaluated at this level trough prospective LCA. Eco-design conducted according to these solutions makes it possible to address environmental problems related to excessive consumption of resources associated with one or more phases of the life cycle of a product component. Beyond new theoretical speculations on the relationship between prospective LCA and eco-design, this study has helped to show that a patent search, also conducted according to the criteria of the ISO standards, allows this intersection to close the circle on the eco-design. In this way, it is possible to be surer of finding and selecting the design solutions that can actually solve the environmental problems of a product.