Challenges and trends within eco-design

Despite years of research and other activities in society the anthropogenic impact on nature still increase. Eco-design has a potential to reduce this impact, but yet a minority of companies practice it. The aim of this paper is to identify current challenges and trends within eco-design. In addition, the paper further aims to disclose important eco-design related research gaps. Eco-design challenges and trends have been studied in 22 selected papers, out of 52, found in ScienceDirect during April 2015. In addition, four snowballed papers from the same database and one standard were included. Challenges and trends are revealed and structured into four categories; 1) system and success level; 2) strategy level; 3) action level; and 4) tools level. Most challenges and least trends are found within the first category: systems and success level. An implication from the result is that research and other activities should more than today be supported by a system and success level. Future research should focus on understanding the industry’s perspective, help set requirements in product specifications, create low economic risk implementation roadmaps, understanding how to map knowledge and information to aid eco-design implementation. It is also preferable to facilitate an efficient inclusion of social and economic aspects when practicing ecodesign.