Although this sounds like “throw it over the wall, its not the designer’s problem”, I think its a valuable perspective. Designers can reasonably hope to control only their front-end activities and some of production. Of course being able to spec materials that could be ground into dust or combusted more readily would be the responsible angle for a designer. But your statement reminds me of one of our VP’s constantly saying that product development cannot and should not be perceived as the Heroes coming to save the damsels in distress (operations, marketing, etc.) and instead doing our job as best as possible.