AbstractThere is a growing commitment by manufacturers, both in the United States and abroad, to assure environmental responsibility for all of their operations. This trend is driven partly by market demands for “green” products and partly by changes in international standards and regulations. In response, leading companies are demonstrating that environmental improvement can actually increase profitability, and design for environment (DFE) is emerging as an important business practice.The ability to evaluate environmental quality in objective, measurable terms is a key component of an effective DFE capability. In particular, environmental quality metrics are essential to support goal setting, monitoring, and continuous improvement in the design of products and processes. This article describes environmental quality measurement tools and procedures, particularly as they relate to DFE. One of the challenges of performance measurement is to incorporate a life‐cycle view of environmental performance into measurement tools that can be easily computed and tracked.