Biodegradability and Recycling In Industrial Product Design Phase - Essay Example

In industries, recycling is one of the main phases related to the process of product development. Recycling helps industries in two ways. First, it helps in making used products usable again and secondly, it helps in the development of new products using the raw material of the recycled used products.

Companies need raw materials to develop new products. If the process of recycling is stopped for some time, it will affect the product manufacturing processes adversely because, in nature, the availability ratio of these materials is already decreasing with every passing day. If recycling is stopped, the raw material will definitely end before time because raw material from recycled products covers a large percentage of the overall raw material being provided to the companies for product development. The process of recycling produces a number of benefits for companies and for the whole environment. Some of which include reduced waste, improved environment, reduced use of energy as recycling of products takes less energy than processing raw material, and reduced pollution.

In the industrial product design phase, degradability and recycling of waste products help companies in reducing the cost of the product as they do not have to buy expensive raw material from suppliers which eventually increases the overall cost of the product. Recycling of products can help companies in increasing the level of production while decreasing the level of cost associated with product manufacturing. Along with decreasing the cost of product manufacturing, recycling also reduces the amount of energy required to design the products, as companies do not have to bring raw materials from distant locations. Moreover, recycling also reduces the time required to manufacture products as companies do not have to arrange virgin materials from outside sources, rather they can use recycling to develop products which help in reducing the overall duration of product manufacturing.

If we talk about the role of economic cost during the design phase, we can say that economic cost plays a significant role right from the beginning of the product design phase until the end of the whole process. Recycling helps in preserving natural resources and cutting down the economic cost of product manufacturing. A company has to consider the economic cost of developing a product because if cost becomes higher than the profit that a product yields, it adversely affects the profitability index of the company instead of improving it. Therefore, we can say that economic cost plays a critical role in the product design phase because it is associated directly with the profitability level of a company.