Evaluation of product recyclability at the product design phase: a time-series forecasting methodology

Nowadays, the society is paying more and more attention to the issues that plague the environment. There is a growing need for enterprises to design and manufacture environmentally friendly products, in order to take up the responsibility of sustainable development of the society. The entire product life cycle consists of design, manufacturing, usage and recycling phases. These phases involve various economic and environmental factors that affect the recyclability of products. Previous researchers mainly focused on the single phase of the product’s life cycle. Moreover, they did not take into account the dynamic change of the recyclable material’s cost. In this paper, a time-series forecasting methodology is proposed to evaluate the product’s recyclability at the product design phase. It considers various economic and environmental factors of different stages of the product’s life cycle. In addition, a time-series forecasting method is utilised for predicting the cost of the recycled material at the produ...