Awareness for the Environmental and Air Intensifies;
Daikin Receives First Good Design Award for Air Purifier
Shifting in time to the late 1980s, environmental problems surfaced as an important issue that affected people's lives.
Global warming, ozone-layer depletion, marine pollution, acid rain, loss of forests and desertification, loss of biodiversity, and pollution--all of these global environmental issues became evident in succession. It was obvious that these issues could not be resolved by one individual country and instead required efforts on a global scale.
The World Commission on Environment and Development (commonly known as the Brundtland Commission) was established by the United Nations amid this worsening of global environmental problems. The Brundtland Report (Our Common Future) was released in 1987 to trigger wider recognition of the global environmental issues. Five years later, the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (also known as the Earth Summit) was held in Rio de Janeiro, and it attracted great attention.
It was from around this time that the manufacturing and design sectors were asked to embody environmental consciousness, such as making designs using selected materials having less environmental impact, and incorporate the three R's of the environment: reduce, reuse, and recycle.
