ABSTRACT
The American Heritage Dictionary defines a product as “anything produced by human or mechanical effort or by a natural process” (Morris, 1969). Products are material objects that serve a function in society. This function may be associated with the necessities of daily life such as food, shelter, clothing, or transportation or it may be purely for recreation or pleasure or other uses. As a society, we produce, consume, and dispose of millions of products daily. At the point of purchase, the consumer rarely evaluates what it took to make the product from the perspective of materials, energy, and human labor or what happens at its “end of life.” Rather, the average customer considers price, functionality, aesthetics, and quality.
