6. Conclusion

The definition of ecodesign has evolved over time: initially confined to physical product design, it now applies to all company activities. An analysis of the scientific, technical, legal and normative literature has enabled us to identify 625 eco-design tools that can be applied to a company's various activities and used by a wide variety of users (designers, buyers, managers, logisticians, etc.). Each of them requires its own knowledge, skills, data and time of use. This explains the difficulty companies have in finding the right tool(s) to implement an eco-design approach.

Various proposals for classifying these tools have been made in the past, without necessarily taking the end-user into account. A taxonomy, based on the purposes of ecodesign tools, is proposed. It comprises 22 different sets. The ecodesign tools found were associated with one or more of these...