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There was a time when cradle-to-grave manufacturing was the norm -- and even made good business sense. Manufacturers made products that weren't meant to last past their usefulness. The products were simply tossed to the curb and consumers would shop for another widget just like the old one.

Then came talk about the environment. People started thinking about the consequences of throwing away all those widgets. They started worrying about their carbon footprints, and they wanted widget manufacturers to do the same.

A funny thing happened on the way to environmental responsibility -- it actually helped the bottom line.

Thus was born the cradle-to-cradle and design-for-environment manufacturing mindset: Make products that easily can be recycled, reused and re-purposed.

Through the years, many manufacturers have embraced a design-for-environment mentality without much notice from consumers. For example, remember the black plastic base on two-liter soda bottles? To make the bottles easier to recycle, manufacturers did away with the unneeded component. Not only was it an environmentally friendly move, it saved manufacturers money on each bottle as well.

For many manufacturers, designing for the environment also is a marketing coup. General Electric Co.'s Ecomagination campaign, for instance, complete with a commercial featuring a twinkle-toed pachyderm dancing in the rain, aims to highlight the company's focus on a cleaner environment.

Ecomagination includes a $1.5-billion annual investment in research and development for cleaner technologies; plans to double GE revenue to $20 billion in 2010 from sales of products and services that provide big environmental advantages; and a corporate reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions.

Last year Hewlett-Packard's recycling program took back 140 million pounds of material destined for landfills.
Another manufacturer making the most of innovation is Palo Alto, Calif.-based Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP). The company launched its design-for-environment program in 1992 with three priorities in mind: energy efficiency, materials innovation and design for recyclability.