The Sustainable Development Group (SDG) is the centre of expertise on Sustainability and the Environment in IOM3. Its members are drawn from across the Divisions and Societies within IOM3, from key industrial sectors and from leaders of UK and EU R&D projects.

The main aim of the SDG will be to promote life-cycle thinking and to coordinate the activities of the Institute's divisions and committees in life-cycle thinking where this concept impinges on the professional and industrial interests of the Institute and its members.

The main background to these aims is the Communication on Integrated Product Policy of the European Commission. The Communication on Integrated Product Policy (IPP) outlines a strategy for reducing the environmental impact caused by products.

The manufacture, use and disposal of products are the cause of many of the environmental challenges we are facing today.  IPP is not attempting to reduce consumption; rather, it is seeking to reduce the environmental impact of increased consumption.  The life-cycle of a product is often long and complicated. It covers all the areas from the extraction of natural resources, through their design, manufacture, assembly, marketing, distribution, sale and use to their eventual disposal as waste.  However, existing environmental product-related policies have tended to focus on large point sources of pollution, such as industrial emissions and waste management issues, rather than the products themselves and how they contribute to environmental degradation at other points in their life cycles. Measures have also tended to look at the chosen phases in isolation.

IPP represents a new approach and advocates "life-cycle thinking".  This means that when pollution-reduction measures are identified, consideration is given to the whole of a product's life-cycle, from cradle to grave. That way, appropriate action can be taken at the problem stages in the life-cycle. This approach also avoids just shunting the environmental impacts from one phase of the life-cycle to another. Instead it aims to reduce the overall environmental impact.

By adopting the IPP as a principle we can embrace the professional and industrial interests of the IoM3 and its members.