Today, as the environmental pollution and the natural resource depletion have been accelerated, people thinks that it is important to minimize environmental load and improve resource efficiency through the product life cycle. This paradigm shift-from the cowboy economy to the spaceship economy-requires the producer, consumer and government to play an important role for the sustainable development.
Because the producer has direct influence on the resource efficiency which is determined primarily by the product design, procurement and production process, the research on how to change the rules of market that make the producer to consider the marginal productivity of natural resources becomes the center of the environmental issues. As a one scheme, product take-back, or extended producer responsibility, which means that producers have to take back their products when they come to the post consumption phase has been carried out in Europe.
When the producers ought to take back their products, this affects their decisions such as product design, production process, procurement and distribution channel. Among them, the environmental friendly product design-DFE-is very important in terms of environment because it affect the consumption of natural resources and the environmental load through the product life cycle.
This paper deals with the conceptual model, which explains the relationship between the product take-back and the producer’s DFE strategy and confirm it through the case studies-domestic PC and fluorescent light industries. This study can be understood as a foundation for the research on whether the DFE strategy facilitate the sustainable product-service system.
