Eco-innovation in Manufacturing Plants Illustrated with an Example of Steel Products Development

In the global economy environment, industrial products need to be re-designed in order to meet the requirements of the global market. Changes regarding products are implemented on two levels, with one focusing on their competitiveness and the other on environment protection. There is an interaction between both levels as competitive products are mostly those products that have been re-designed to become environment friendly. The European Union Green Paper on Integrated Product Policy describes the importance of environment friendly design in the following way: „the integrated product policy should first of all focus on the design of environmentally friendly products” 1 . Industrial products are a direct or indirect cause of environment pollution and as such should be re-designed. Over the recent years there have been a number of changes to industrial products. In some cases completely new, environment friendly products were created as a result of a process called eco-innovation. Most frequently, however, the development of products consisted in the introduction of changes without a change to the main structure of a product but considerable improvement of its environmental impact (product modification). ECO-INNOVATION