Incorporating environmental aspects into a product poses a greater challenge to the stakeholders. There are various environmental issues concerned with developing a product and often they are found to be conflicting. There exists a need to examine the environmental risks and benefits associated with any product so that improvements can be made in dealing with the end of life issues of any product. An easy to adopt evaluation model was described which allows this risk/benefit assessment to be made in a sequential manner throughout the life cycle of any product considering environmental characteristics. The major environmental risks/benefits are tabulated and presented graphically for ease of evaluation in order to improve the automotive product. A simple but effective way of sorting out design-oriented issues studied was also explained and suitable alternatives were suggested with the aim of reducing the environmental impact of the automotive product. © 2012 Springer-Verlag London Limited.