The increasing availability of product environmental information provides an opportunity for consumers to choose more sustainable products and for designers to be rewarded for selecting more sustainable materials. Here are some tips on how to do this.

Look at the packaging of the next product you buy and in a lot of cases you will find some information about the environmental impacts of the product. Some of this is basic information about how the product should be recycled at the end of its useful life. An increasing number of products display more sophisticated environmental data such as an eco label, the amount of recycled content in the materials used, or details of the product