The Role of Eco-design Education in Influencing the Design of Electrical and Electronic Equipment: A Case Study Involving Industrial Design Engineering Students

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the influence that environmental education in eco-design has on industrial design engineer students facing the design of electrical and electronic toys. From the designer's perspective, eco-design education improves the extent to which environmental requirements are incorporated into the design process of electrical and electronic equipment, thus allowing for the development of products with enhanced environmental performance and greater potential for reuse or recycling. Taking electrical and electronic toys as a target product category, a workshop intended for students of bachelor's and master's degrees related to Industrial Design Engineering, was organized in a Spanish University. The main objective was to determine the extent to which designers include environmental recommendations into the process of designing their products and what type of recommendations they incorporate. In addition, this study determines differences among students from different educational profiles and analyzes the willingness of designers and future designers to participate in this kind of initiatives. The results suggest that training designers in the end-of-life of products and their environmental issues in a practical way makes them more willing to incorporate environmental requirements into the design process of electrical and electronic toys.