This paper will report on the results of a three year UK government funded research project entitled Design for the Environment Decision Support (DEEDS). As part of this project a survey of the Electronic and Electrical Industry was carried out in order to understand the way in which industry in the UK, Central Europe and the USA are carrying out Ecodesign. The survey also investigated the successes and failures companies had experienced and the lessons they had learnt along the way. From this survey we identified a number of success factors that enabled companies to successfully integrate environmental decisions into their product development process which is very unusual in that ecodesign is significantly different for the pre- and post-specification stages of the design process. This paper explains the findings related to the first phase being the very early stages of the product development process prior to the specification being finalised. A second paper, considers the findings from the later phases of the product development process.