What is the connection between electronics and sustainability?

Of all of the things we make or use in our world, electronic products have perhaps the largest potential role to play in determing whether or not we ever achieve sustainability. Information and Communication Technology (ICT), which is now almost entirely built on a platform of electronic devices, has been called a “threshold technology” (1). This means that it has the potential to move us either toward a truly sustainable future or in the opposite direction: toward a world of ever increasing socio-economic inequality and environmental damage.

ICT has already played a role in almost every aspect of recent human development. The technological innovations it has yielded have included advances in medical imaging, sequencing technology for the mapping of the human genome, smart vehicles, efficient HVAC systems for the climate control of buildings, renewable energy technologies, and countless others. Furthermore, ICT penetration is strongly correlated with the emergence of democracy, economic development, and the empowerment of under-represented groups. Overall, this collection of technologies has dramatically improved the quality of life for a large part of the world’s population.

On the other hand, as physical objects, the electronic devices that have enabled this information revolution pose more environmental challenges than almost any other category of products. They contain hundreds of materials and require extremely precise structure and assembly on a very small scale, which makes them extremely resource-intensive to produce. At the end of their useful lives (which are constantly shortened through technological and fashion-induced obsolescence), they are added to the ever-growing flow of e-waste, an increasingly controversial and well-documented problem. Furthermore, the demand for new, better, and more electronic products is far from abating. We can only expect it to increase as ICT penetrates further and deeper into developing markets.

The picture gets more complicated when we consider that even the environmental dimension of ICT’s impacts is not so straightforward when the network-level effects of these technologies are taken into account. Network-scale impacts of ICT can benefit the environment by increasing the efficiency of industrial processes and reducing environmentally harmful behaviors. For example, electronics have the potential to significantly reduce the need for transport by providing virtual communication options, leading to the dematerialization of certain products (e.g. the virtual provision of multimedia in place of physical CDs), and providing improved environmental monitoring capacity. With recent concern over global climate change, large-scale energy efficiency gains resulting from ICT use across economic sectors are seen as a key tool for transitioning to a lower-carbon world (2).

But one of the key ways in which ICT has captured our imagination is by providing us with hope. Out of our impressive technological arsenal, it has some of the greatest potential for solving our global catch-22: to improve the quality of life for impoverished and underserved communities of people worldwide while simultaneously reducing our overwhelming environmental footprint.

However, we’re not there yet. The way forward – on the path of true sustainable development – requires that we find a way to both increase access to ICT and the services it provides, while exponentially reducing the environmental impacts associated with electronic products themselves. The good news is that designing environmentally sustainable electronics is possible. Advances in green design, green chemistry, recycling technologies, smart infrastructures, developments in extended producer responsibility, and similar innovations could all serve as a foundation for the transformative leaps that could lead to a sustainable high-tech industry in the near future.

These resource pages present a snapshot of where we currently stand on the path towards sustainable electronics and ICT, from both environmental as well as socio-economic perspectives. Both the electronics sector and society as a whole must join to forge a way down this new path, and at the Green Electronics Council, our goal is to help steer us in the right direction.

A Snapshot of the ICT Ecosystem & Some Key Statistics

To understand the challenges of designing electronic products that are functionally and physically more sustainable, it’s useful to take a quick look at the “ICT ecosystem,” the convoluted network of producers and consumers that comprises the passage of electronic devices through the product life cycle.

The ICT hardware-manufacturing sector is characterized by quick product turnover,complicated and globalized production chains, capital intensity, a high level of outsourcing, and a global material footprint. A typical computer contains over 1,000 components, whose raw materials draw on the majority of the periodic table (and some of which are rare and energy-intensive to extract). It’s also typical for these components to be manufactured and assembled in different parts of the world – for example, semiconductor chips made in Scotland, a disk drive made in the Philippines, an LCD monitor made in South Korea, circuit boards fabricated in China and assembled in Taiwan, and the final product assembled in Mexico (1).

In 2005, only 25% of production was done “in house,” with 75% outsourced to contract manufacturers, primarily in Asia. From recent research we see that Taiwan is the world’s electronics factory, producing nearly three-quarters of the world’s laptop computers and two-thirds of the world’s LCD monitors (2). Other major electronics producers include the Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia, China, India, and to a lesser extent, Latin America and Eastern Europe (1). It is contract manufacturers in these regions that are actually responsible for converting materials and assembling them into the products that society uses daily. They are also the ones responsible for setting working conditions in factories and adhering to local environmental regulations. Thus, the original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), whose brand names we recognize on our electronic products, actually join the chain fairly late in the process.

Once electronic devices end up in the hands of consumers, they contribute to electricity use throughout their operating lives. Finally, they become part of the growing global stockpile of e-waste,

Here are some key statistics about ICT products:

Demand for ICT continues to grow.

• In 2005, Americans used an average of six wireless products in their daily lives, up from an average of 3 in 1999 (3).
• In 2007, PC shipments totaled 260 million worldwide, representing a 13% increase from 2006 (4).

The most significant growth is occurring in developing countries.

• Today only 10% of China’s population of 1.3 billion owns a computer. By 2020 that number is projected to rise to 70%. By that same year, half the world’s population will own a mobile phone and almost a third of the global population will have a PC (currently one in 50) (5).

The total stock of ICT products at saturation is projected to be enormous.

• Craig Barrett of Intel has estimated that thus far one billion personal computers have been made (8).
• If projections for year 2020 are correct, that year we will have over 4 billion PCs in active use worldwide. Not only does this imply a massive increase in the production of ICT devices, but it will also necessitate greater network capacity to support their energy needs and the creation of an infrastructure for their end of life management (5).

Scrap electronics will leave a legacy of waste.

• Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) is increasing in Europe at 3-5% per year, three times higher than the average waste growth rate. 90% of WEEE is destined for landfills or incinerators without adequate treatment (7).
• Though some researchers have questioned the reliability of the figures on e-waste off-shoring (9), widely published estimates suggest that 50 – 80 % of e-waste collected for recycling in the United States ultimately gets exported to recycling centers in the developing world (10).

The future of ICT and the ways in which it may permanently alter our lives remains uncertain.

• One of the more startling, and perhaps, important illustrations of how invisibly integrated ICT has become in our lives is that only 2% of the approximately 8-billion microprocessor units produced in 2002 actually ended up in computers (6). The number of applications for microprocessors continues to expand and spread between sectors. As they already have, these technologies are likely to continue changing our lives and relationships in new and unexpected ways.

Socio-Economic Impacts of Electronics and ICT

One of the key ways that ICT will contribute to a sustainable future is through its socioeconomic impacts. The full landscape of these impacts is still under active study as new uses for ICT continue to emerge and the technologies expand into new markets. Research has revealed both positive and negative sides to this expansion.

But despite worrying news reports about Internet rehab facilities springing up in China to accept burgeoning numbers of cyber-addicted kids (1), the most prominent of ICT’s socio-economic impacts are considered beneficial. Some of these positive impacts incude:

• Access to information: personal empowerment, social catalysis, encouragement of democratic values. Most fundamentally, ICT provides individual empowerment through access to information and the ability to communicate and organize with like-minded peers. Individuals are able to educate themselves, rally around environmental and social justice causes, and fact-check what they are being told by their local media or politicians. Though national-scale effects based on these personal impacts have long been suspected and even assumed, some of the latest research has begun to actually confirm their reality. For example, a recent study showed a very high correlation between ICT expansion and democratic freedoms (2). Researchers looked at historical data for 133 countries and devised indicators for comparing increased ICT penetration with the expansion of democracy, finding a very strong connection between the two. However, they also found the flipside: in countries where ICT expansion was quashed (such as by filtering access to the Internet), democratic values suffered. These are correlations, not causal relationships, but they still provide some interesting food for thought.

• Creation of and access to new markets. As was noted in the declaration of principles at the World Summit on the Information Society, the spread of ICT is a catalyst for social and economic development. To quote a recent paper on the subject: “ICT can be a powerful tool in increasing productivity, creating jobs, generating economic growth, and increasing international cooperation in finance, trade, and Foreign Direct Investment (FDI).” (3). In addition to these macro-scale changes, we also experience these economically catalytic effects on a personal level as a result of the growth of person-to-person markets such as E-Bay and Craigslist. Beyond just making it easier for us to clear out our attics, these secondary markets have had significant economic and environmental consequences: they have opened up new venues for the recirculation of used products and have changed transport patterns associated with shopping (though not always beneficially). On an industrial scale, similar markets have even facilitated the exchange of waste materials between industrial facilites. There are countless interesting examples of the small scale economic innovations that have emerged through ICT. Another interesting case is the growth of person-to-person foreign aid. On Kiva.org, a microfinancing website, individuals can give small loans to entrepreneurs in impoverished communities worldwide to help them start their businesses. These examples are just a small part of the changes we will continue to see in the global digital economy.

• Cross-sectoral technological advances. ICT has been at the root of a plethora of technological advances that have made modern life more pleasant, easier, safer, less expensive, and more interesting. As the world has gotten larger through our growing tendency to hop between continents, it has also continued to shrink in size courtesy of our personal communication devices. Our cars have gotten increasingly skilled at maneuvering safely in changing road conditions and on-board GPS systems have helped save many a person the trouble of having to stop and ask strangers for directions. But moving beyond the banal, everything from blood sugar monitors to MRI machines to missle control systems is now dependent on our ability to precisely transmit information on computer chips.

Of course, not everyone has greeted the advent of the digital information society with open arms. On a global scale, ICT has exacerbated certain forms of inequality by leaving whole groups of individuals without access to these powerful technologies, a phenomenon known as the digital divide. There has also been some concern over the potentially negative socio-psychological changes individuals may experience as society mass-migrates online.

• Digital Divide. As important financial, political, and personal transactions increasingly happen exclusively in cyber-space, there is growing concern that those who have yet to join the digital revolution might be left behind. There is a well-documented disparity in ICT access worldwide, known as the digital divide, with many countries, particularly in the global south, exhibiting much lower rates of digital participation. Financial, racial, gender, and age inequalities are made even worse by unequal access to ICT, both within and between societies. Though it is true that there is a strong correlation between income level and computer ownership (for example, college-educated individuals are eight times more likely to have a home computer and 16 times more likely to have home internet access) (4), many researchers caution that the digital divide is not purely the result of a simple income disparity. This is evidenced by the fact that simply giving disadvantaged people access to ICT does not necessarily unlock all of ICT’s benefits. They note that without the cultural capital and appropriate context, disadvantaged low-income adults fail to convert ICT into something “meaningful, useful, and desirable to them” (5). Similar findings have been the result of stuidies in rural areas in the developing world. Many researchers point out that as with a great deal of the environmental promise offered by ICT, for now, many of the social gains it could provide also remain theoretical. As noted in a recent study on the spread of ICT in India, “there has been marginal success in fulfilling basic human needs in India, in spite of the proliferation of ICT.” (6) The authors note that it is not enough to give impoverished farmers in rural India access to the Internet; for ICT to deliver maximum social benefit, it must be deployed in a manner that recognizes social needs and cultural barriers.

• Technologically-induced isolation. Many psychologists and sociologists have remarked with concern that we are retreating from the real world into the cyber one at younger and younger ages. Children are spending less time playing outdoors and have much lower levels of interaction with nature than prior to the digital age. These behavioral shifts have, among other things, been suggested to be contributing to the rise in obesity worldwide. As a result of new communication technologies, we have also begun to experience a general reduction in face-to-face contact with others and a correspondingly reduced reliance on local community. Thus, though ICT has in most ways increased interpersonal connectivity and made the world a more accessible place, this form of connectivity is displacing reliance on traditional community and family structures. These trends have been discussed in both academic and popular circles. Since 2005, American author Richard Louv’s term, Nature Deficit Disorder, has come into more frequent use to describe the behavioral profile of modern children who have very limited contact with the natural world (7).

• Information filtering & new crime. Just as ICT can empower disenfranchized groups of individuals working towards social good, it can do the same for individuals who have less noble objectives. Several research groups have noted that ICT is providing new platforms and discreet meeting places for the collaboration of radical hate groups and criminals (2). Certain governments have also been recorded as using the internet for malignant purposes, most frequently through blocking communication and access to certain kinds of information, including: women’s health issues, historical data, political and religious information (3, 8, 9). Furthermore, purely information-based attacks are becoming more and more of a threat as we become more dependent on ICT to serve as our primary source of information. There are already many examples of these kinds of info-stream disruptions and their impacts. During the June 2005 political election in Iran, the government put a temporary ban on sending text messages in order to stop the flow of communication in support of or against specific candidates. Some scholars believe that this resulted in a significant distortion of the election’s outcome (2). There are also entirely new forms of crime that have sprung up in cyberspace. Hackers, computer viruses, identity theft, digital espionage, and many other related web crimes are well-known threats to any modern computer user. In fact, these threats have gotten so enormous that a recent BBC news report went as far as to say that an age of cyber-warfare is “dawning,” where governments will potentially be using these tools against one another to gain political and diplomatic leverage (10).

Thus we can see that ICT is a mixed bag – it can act as an amplifier of whatever trends it encounters, whether it be positive or negative.

One example of the mixed social impacts resulting from the expansion of ICT is the case of online matrimony in India. Traditional matrimonial arrangements are central to many long-standing cultural patterns and the maintenance of family structure. However, it has long been recognized by social reformers in India that arranged marriages perpetrate many social injustices. They enforce castes, prevent widows from remarrying, and force the woman’s family to pay a hefty dowry. The advent of online matrimony companies (such as BharatMatrimony.com) is in position to make faster progress on the front of arranged marriages than what social reformers have been able to achieve in decades (6). Not everyone is pleased with the loss of traditions, but it is undeniable that the changes brought on by ICT in this case could have a profoundly equalizing effect.

Finally, ICT has a whole host of impacts that we probably cannot yet even perceive. As we begin to interact with machines more often than with other people, forcing our brains to develop new skills and abilities, we may even be fundamentally altering the course of human development. We cannot yet envision the directions in which these technologies will develop, or what their net impact will ultimately be.

Environmental Impacts of Electronics and ICT

The environmenal impacts of electronics and ICT are quite difficult to accurately quantify for a couple of reasons:

1. one The ICT ecosystem is extremely complex. It is hard to track exactly when and where environmental impacts of a product occur when you are considering devices that contain thousands of parts, hundreds of globally sourced materials, and were assembled by an international labor force.

1. two There are many large-scale network effects and behavioral feedback loops related to ICT, including rebound effects. These can eventually lead to enormous environmental impacts (both good and bad). However, some of these feedback loops take quite a long time to become apparent, and it can take years or even decades to realize the full impact of certain technological deployments. In some cases, it is difficult to ever connect the causes with the effects.

Finally, as a general note, it is important to point out that the line between socio-economic impacts and environmental ones is not always as clear cut as it may seem. After all, it is at the level of human choices and behaviors that most environmental impacts originate (choosing to consume, use resources, travel, etc.). ICT’s effects on human behavior can be extremely subtle and difficult to quantify.

Positive Environmental Impacts of ICT

• Dematerialization. There is a general understanding in the environmental management literature that the most important pre-requiste for human sustainable development is active and rapid dematerialization of products and services (1). Dematerialization basically refers to doing more with less; getting the same amount of value or service out of a smaller amount of physical material. Incremental examples of dematerialization simply refer to material efficiency gains (eco-efficiency). Total dematerialization involves fully replacing a physical product with a virtual or service-based alternative. Some of the most common ICT-based examples of dematerialization include: digital access to multimedia (replacing CDs and DVDs with digital downloads); e-billing, e-banking, email & other reductions in paper use; and the replacement of transport with improved virtual communiation. In a recent report calculating the potential carbon savings from ICT, it was estimated that dematerialization could lead to 500 Mt CO2 equivalent of savings in 2020 – the equivalent of the total global footprint of the ICT industry in 2002 (2 – GeSi). As a specific example of this kind of dematerialization potential, a recent study on an e-book reader, Amazon’s Kindle, quantified the potential greenhouse gas emissions savings it could lead to by reducing the production of books. In an LCA study funded by Amazon, researchers project that the total costs of the device are on average fully offset after a single year of use. Additional years of use are pedicted to result in net carbon savings of 168 kg of CO2 per year (3).

• Efficiency gains in energy and natural resource use. Beyond total dematerialization, there is a multitude of ways ICT can lead to efficiency gains in material and energy use. Some of these include:
  • use of automated inventory systems (leading to lower spoilage rates for perishable products)
  • reduced waste in manufacturing
  • efficiently climate controlled buildings (“smart buildings”)
  • improved sales per square foot of storage space through use of virtual stores,
  • efficiently metered electricity (“smart grids”)
  • optimized traffic flow, streamlined recycling systems
  • improved crop yields through tracking systems for plant disease

However, because of global concern over climate change, the spotlight has been fixed on the issues of energy usage and greenhouse gas emissions. Though energy is used throughout the ICT product life cycle, ICT has a unique role in the global energy future because of the efficiency gains it can lead to. ICT’s potential role in mitigating climate impacts was the subject of the recently published “SMART 2020” report, which concluded that ICT’s potential for increasing energy efficiency in other sectors is so great that it beyond offsets the use phase emissions of the ICT sector itself. The group evaluated potential gains from ICT in motor systems, industrial environments, energy grids, transport and storage logistics, and buildings in a variety of geographic regions. They concluded that while the ICT sector should continue to improve the energy efficiency of its own products and services, its largest influence would be in enabling energy efficiencies in other sectors. This is “an opportunity that could deliver carbon savings five times larger than the total emissions from the entire ICT sector in 2020,” a 15% reduction of emissions over business as usual estimates, and a total of approximately 600 billion Euros in cost savings (4). The chart included here summarizes the breakdown of where these savings would originate. To get an idea of how we might go about accessing these savings, even something as simple as adding a direct feedback function on a power-using device, allowing the user to see how much energy they are consuming, has been shown to result in energy savings ranging between 5 and 15% (5). However, it’s important to realize that even if ICT can deliver on these promises, the CO2 emissions reductions needed to stabilize atmospheric greenhouse gas levels still exceed what those gains would represent.

• Eco-information transparency. It is easy to underestimate the role that information transparency can play in moving us towards the goal of environmental sustainability. One of the first barriers we must get over in order to move towards environmentally optimized decisions is to have a good understanding of the impacts we’re actually having, and exactly where they come from, strengthening our understanding of “the interconnections between human activity and natural conditions” (1). Without continued advances in modeling and data management, we wouldn’t have a grasp of atmospheric or climatic conditions, trends in ocean health or biodiversity. On a smaller scale, modeling is also allowing us to make sounder, more environmentallly efficient technical decisions. As one of countless examples, researchers recently developed a wind turbine simulator, which helps choose the correct turbine for a given installation and location (6). This could lead to potentially significant gains in energy efficiency and ensure more reliable renewable energy production. In an entirely different sector, Kim et al. (7) simulated the design of a sustainable optimum for book delivery as a result of e-commerce purchases. They calculated the location of ideal pick-up points in areas that customers would frequently visit anyway in the course of their usual shopping. This could represent an enormous savings in car miles. However, when the net is cast even more broadly to include the energy impacts of behaviors such as e-commerce that are enabled by ICT, the picture is less clear. For instance, findings thus far suggest that e-commerce is not reducing overall transport for shopping purposes (8). The things that people now order online need to be shipped separately, whereas they used to represent a marginal increase in personal car use while consumers were already out shopping.

In this discussion of ICT’s potential to result in real environmental gains, it is very important to mention the under-recognized problem of rebound effects.

Most of the potential environmental gains discussed here are founded on the assumption that improving the energy efficiency of goods and services will lead to a societal reduction in energy consumption. However, when we look at the actual historical record, this hasn’t been the case. All the energy savings we have made through efficiency gains have effectivley lowered the cost of energy-using products or services, simply leading people to consume more – either in terms of more hours of use, or in terms of a higher quality of service. For example, if a more efficient heater is installed in a home, empirical evidence has shown that the user will likely opt to keep their house at a slightly warmer temperature for the same cost as with their previous heater (e.g. 9). Additionally, because of the effectively lower price of more efficient products, a larger number of people can afford to consume them. This is certainly a positive development for the comfort and satisfaction of those individuals, but it has lead to a rather indiscriminate use of additional resources in the developed world. On a national level, we have seen rebound effects swallow most of the gains we have made in terms of efficiency over the last several decades (10). It is conceivable, then, that even all of the efficiency savings predicted by the “Smart 2020” report could be squandered if we fail to adjust our behaviors and fall prey to such rebound effects instead.

Thus, we can’t only think in terms of efficiency – we must also translate these efficiency gains into actual conservation – using less rather than just more efficiently. This is something that must eventually be done through a conscious effort by users.

Negative Environmental Impacts of ICT

In contrast to the positive environmental impacts of ICT, which happen on the largescale network level (through gains in system efficiency as well as behavioral change) most of the negative impacts happen on the product level – as a result of procuring, using, and disposing of the materials that make up the actual products.

In any discussion of the negative environmental impacts of electronics, there are usually three significant categories under discussion:

• Energy and Resource Use – ICT devices have among the highest environmental impacts per unit mass out of any category of products. The production of a memory chip requires about 600 times its weight in fossil fuel. This is at least an order of magnitude higher than any other product category – for comparison: the production of a car requires 1 – 2 times, and aluminum cans require 4 – 5 times their weight in fossil fuel (1). This is largely because some of the materials that make up electronic products are rare metals, which are energy-costly to extract (such as gold), and other materials that need to be purified to an extremely high standard (such as silica for semiconductors). Because the production chains associated with electronics are so convoluted, the transport of individual components also adds quite a bit to the total energy cost. Finally, all electronics are energy using products, so they continue to rack up energy impacts throughout their useful life. All together this adds up to a very significant energy footprint.

• Toxic Materials – Though there is disagreement about the importance of this issue, many groups cite the presence of toxic materials in ICT products as the top priority for shifting the electronics industry in a more sustainable direction (2). Many ICT products, especially older models, contain substantial quantities of hazardous substances. For example, older cathode ray tubes (CRTs) contain between four and seven pounds of lead (3). In newer products, additives such as stabilizers and flame retardants pose some of the largest concern. The users of ICT products rarely, if ever, come in contact with the toxic components of their products. However, some researchers firmly believe that any inclusion of toxics means that they will eventually emerge somewhere along the product life cycle. In other words, it is impossible to eliminate the risk associated with a product if the components of that product aren’t inherently non-hazardous. And indeed, in the current ICT product cycle, there are plenty of people along the product chain who do get exposed to the hazardous materials that make up the devices: people working in mining, manufacturing, and both formal and informal recycling. The health impacts on continuously exposed individuals can be very severe. Furthermore, if electronic products are ever disposed of inappropriately, which research indicates happens quite often, the toxic materials trapped inside the products get released into the environment, ending up in air, water, and soil. However, it must be noted that despite the fact that toxics substitution is challenging, electronics manufacturers have made great strides in recent years to reduce the toxics content of their products, largely spurred by the EU RoHS regulation describer below. As a result, electronics being manufactured today have far less toxic content than do legacy products.

• Waste Generation – There are several problems associated with electronic waste (e-waste, or Waste Electronic and Electrical Equipment – WEEE). On the most basic level, as with any other waste, there is concern about the sheer quantity of these unwanted electronics. These waste products have a high chance of ending up in a landfill where they will take up valuable space until they are somehow removed, which may never happen. The US EPA estimates that more than 3.2 million tons of electronic waste is deposited in US landfills every year. (5) And though e-waste represented only 1 – 3% of the solid waste stream in the US, it is also the fastest growing segment of solid waste. (6) However, e-waste comes with its own host of special problems, because it also contains significant quantities of valuable as well as toxic materials. The valuable components of e-waste have fueled a trade in electronic waste, where large volumes are shipped from the developed to the developing world to be disassembled. E-waste recycling is typically an informal trade. The recyclers, who rarely work with appropriate protective equipment, often separate the e-waste into fractions over open fires, exposing themselves to toxic fumes and releasing contaminants into the local water and soil. There remains a great deal of discussion about how to manage the problem of e-waste safely without depriving these workers of an income source they have become dependent upon.

With growing recognition of all of these environmental impacts, the overall goal of the electronics sector has become to make electronic devices more “eco-efficient” or green. However, this is not such an easy task, because there isn’t just one way to make something eco-friendlier, and often, there are trade-offs to contend with: if you make something more energy efficient, you might incidentally make it more toxic. How do you handle such complexity, or even figure out how small design changes will impact such a convoluted product chain?

In the following sections, we take a closer look at the product life cycle stages involved in making a typical electronic device, and thus get a better idea of where the environmental impacts are distributed along the electronics chain.

There are also meta-level problems for reducing the environmental impact associated with electronics, such as the issue of product obsolescence. However, these issues are discussed in a later section on greener design.

Ultimately, we will need to devise ways to balance both the environmental as well as the socio-economic impacts of these technologies. An initial attempt to do just that – devise a measuring scheme that would simultaneously quantify social as well as environmental effects – was made by a research team who tried to weigh the positive and negative effect of employing video conferencing instead of travel. They developed a combined socio-environmental score which they called the “Gross Social Feel Good Index” (4). Eventually, we will need to find consistent ways to balance such broader sets of trade offs, perhaps not only within the electronics sector but across the many sectors that it touches.

Eco-Efficiency and the Product Life Cycle

As discussed in the section about ICT’s environmental impacts, the goal within the electronics inudstry has become making products more eco-efficient.

The key bit of information behind any eco-optimization task is this: the environmental impacts of a product don’t just happen during a single phase of that product’s existence; rather, they’re spread over time and space during the various phases of the product’s life cycle.

General stages of a product’s lifecycle include:

Surprisingly often, understanding the impacts across the entire life cycle does not come intuitively. Let’s take a simplified, qualitative example which mostly considers energy use. If you have a reusable, metal coffee mug, you may reason that using it every day is environmentally friendlier than going through 365 disposable paper cups every year. But getting a definitive answer to this question is not as straightforward as one might hope.

Material Extraction: First, we must consider that the metal cup required the mining and processing of at least one energy-intensive raw material (metal ore that had to be extracted from the ground and purified). In comparison, paper cups originate from a potentially sustainable and comparatively much less energy-intensive material: wood pulp (though it is important to consider the origins and type of wood).

Manufacturing: The energy required to shape the metal cup was also orders of magnitude higher than that required to shape pulp into the paper container. Most metal processing techniques demand very high temperatures.

Transport: Shipping the metal cup also required more energy, since metal is much heavier than paper.

Use: Even in the use phase, we see that using the metal cup continues to have impact because the cup itself needs to be washed, at least periodically, which requires the use of heated water and soap. The paper cup doesn’t require anything during the use phase, except perhaps the added use of an insulating sleeve.

End of Life: Finally, once the metal cup is discarded, it will either be recycled (again at a high energy cost) or end up in a landfill, where it is likely to take up space for an indefinite period of time. The paper cup will also probably end up being landfilled (or perhaps recycled or incinerated), but its single-time disposal impacts are again lower than those of the metal cup.

So we see that a seemingly clear choice gets quite a bit more complicated when the product life cycle is looked at more closely. Does this mean then, that disposable cups are the better choice from an environmental perspective? For a one-time use, certainly. But how about for an entire year? The key is in the service life of each product. If you are a devoted coffee drinker and actually do use your metal cup every day without buying a new one, then there is a break-even point at which the high energy intensity of making and transporting that metal container will be balanced out by the energy costs of making and transporting the hundreds of paper cups you would otherwise use (this exact break-even point depends on how the impact comparison is conducted). The same kind of tradeoff is likely true for other environmental costs, such as the volume of toxic pollutants generated in each product life cycle.

So we can see that the goal of making something “eco-friendlier” is only satisfied when the following key methodological requirements are satisfied:

1. you are not “burden shifting” – reducing impacts in one phase of a product’s use, but increasing it in another phase and;
2. you are standardizing the environmental cost against a common unit of service (known as the “functional unit”). The right comparison in the case of the coffee cups is not one metal mug to one paper cup, but one metal mug to many paper cups (perhaps hundreds or thousands – depending on actual use).

The most commonly used quantitative method of performing such a comparison of life cycle burdens is known as Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). However, LCA is not without its technical problems, and is known to be extremely expensive and time consuming to perform. But even when doing an LCA is out of the question, it is always a good idea to apply life cycle thinking to any environmental problem, which is the attempt to qualitatively incorporate the product life cycle, just as in this thought exercise with the cups. These techniques allow designers and managers to see where the largest areas for improvement lie within the system as a whole. Because of the enormity and complexity of the ICT hardware-manufacturing sector, coming up with reliable life cycle analyses for electronic devices has been recognized as a serious challenge. However, the data collected thus far is beginning to give us a better understanding of the environmental impacts associated with the ICT sector as a whole, and how these compare with the impacts associated with other industrial systems. There still remain many unresolved questions, particularly revolving around the decisions to use toxic materials in ICT products rather than move to less toxic alternatives that might reduce performance or shorten product lifespans. Fundamentally, the decisions made come down to corporate or political philosophy dictating our environmental priorities.

The Life Cycle of Electronic Products

Extraction

The major impacts of resource extraction are the same for electronics as for any other resource-intensive products. Ecosystems are altered or destroyed through mining and processing activities, pollution is generated at mining sites (e.g. the accumulation of tailings, acidic runoff, etc.), and large amounts of energy are used for the digging, transport, and processing of materials. However, the difference with electronics is that the range of materials required is extremely large and some of those materials are quite rare. The use of precious metals in electronic devices adds significantly to the “ecological rucksack” of ICT products. Gold, in particular, contributes very highly to the energy required for the extraction of raw materials. This chart, adapted from a 2003 paper by Mueller et al summarizes the energy required to extract raw materials commonly found in a subset of ICT devices, mobile products (1):

Manufacturing

There are several sources of major impact associated with the manufacturing of electronic products including: energy use, water use, toxic materials, and waste production.

For large scale appliances, such as refrigerators and washing machines, the manufacturing phase represents only around 20% of the life cycle energy impact. However, computers and similar personal ICT devices are so energy- and material-intensive to produce that the ratio is reversed in their case. In other words, around 80% of the life cycle energy of a computer is committed in the extraction and manufacturing phase (1). It’s easy to understand how the impact could be so high when we consider that one semiconductor plant can require enough electricity to power a city of 60,000 people and several million gallons of water a day (2).

Beyond energy and water use, there is also some concern about the use of and exposure to toxic materials during the manufacturing phase. Though end-users are rarely exposed to the toxic materials in the products they use on a daily basis, the presence of any toxic material represents an inherent hazard across the lifecycle and is of particular concern in the manufacturing and end-of-life phases. Even in countries with high legal standards for employee health and safety, workers assembling and disassembling products are often exposed to these materials. One research group tested the blood of workers at an electronics recycling plant in Sweden, revealing elevated levels of PBDEs. PBDEs are flame retardant additives with toxic effects such as endocrine impacts and developmental neurotoxicity. When a follow-up study was conducted after some changes were made to the facility and its hygiene practices, the researchers saw an improvement in the levels of some but not all chemical types (3). Though this example is from end-of-life rather than manurfacturing practices, the basic point remains the same: when you have hazardous materials in a product, it is impossible to completely eliminate the risk associated with that product’s life cycle.

Transport & Retail

The transport phase contributes significantly to the impact of most product chains because of the amount of fossil fuel required to move objects around the globe. However, in the case of electronics, the complex product chain involved means that even more transport is required than usual. This varies greatly from product to product, so it is difficult to make generalizations.

Use

The primary environmental impact associated with electronics in their use phase is the amount of energy they consume. As mentioned in the manufacturing section, for most energy consuming products, the use phase tends to be the most impactful in terms of energy. Though this generally holds true for large appliances such as washing machines and refrigerators, in the case of most ICT devices, the majority of resource consumption and energy usage occurs before the product even reaches the consumer. A now widely cited study found that the life cycle energy burden of a computer is dominated by the production phase (81%) as opposed to operation (19%) (1). Despite not being the primary source of energy expense for the life cycle of a computer, the use phase is still considered an extremely significant contributor to ICTs general energy impact, particularly when data centers and server farms are taken into account. Some initial reports in the late 1990s mistakenly suggested that the network energy usage of ICTs were high enough to cause large increases in global electricity consumption and require the construction of new coal-fired power plants. Mills et al suggested that the Internet’s share of electricity amounted to a shockingly high 8% of total demand (2). Though widely publicized, these findings were quickly replaced with more accurate estimates that were published in follow-up studies. In 1999, Koomey et al estimated that the Internet’s share of electricity is closer to 1%. Similarly, in a 2003 paper, Matthews et al. concluded that the entire U.S. telecommunications network only consumes an estimated 0.9% of total U.S. electricity (3). These numbers are closer to what is now accepted to be true. Even with this revised lower estimate, the total U.S. commercial PC stock is estimated to consume in excess of 230PJ of primary energy per year, which is equivalent to 38 million barrels of oil. In his 2004 white paper on ICT and the environment, H. Scott Matthews, a priminen tresearcher in the field of electronics and the environment, pointed out that even with a conservative assumption of only 100 Watts of electricity consumption per unit, the peak demand for the current stock of 500 million PCs is 50,000 megawatts, or energy equivalent of 100 coal-fired power plants. However, there are many potential efficiency gains available because most electronic devices “leak energy” in standby and sleep modes, have inefficient power supplies (often only 50% efficient) and generate heat, which requires cooling and ventilation (4). Beyond just these technical leakages of energy, it has also been shown that simply providing users with feedback about how much energy they are using has the potential to create behavioral changes that can lead to very significant energy savings (5).

End of Life

Estimates published by the U.S. EPA state that around only a quarter of discarded ICT products are recycled at the end of their useful lives, with the remaining majority ending up in landfills (1). With the amount of e-waste increasing annually (it remains the fastest-growing fraction of the municipal solid waste stream), there is increasing concern about responsibly and beneficially handling this material. Though e-waste contains many valuable materials, whose presence provides an incentive for recycling, these materials are present in very small quantities in combination with large amounts of lowvalue scrap such as plastic.

The US e-waste recycling market is still considered quite small; there is significant potential for expansion. In 2003, there were only 400 electronics recyclers operating in the US employing around 7,000 people. Even this relatively small workforce was able to process more than 750,000 tons of e-waste that year (2).

However, the definition of “processing” depends on the facility, and in many cases doesn’t refer to true recycling. Though some researchers have questioned the reliability of the figures on e-waste off-shoring, (7) widely published estimates suggest that 50 – 80 % of e-waste collected for recycling in the United States ultimately gets exported to recycling centers in the developing world.15 Because the U.S. has not ratified the Basel Convention this is still considered legal by international standards, though it would otherwise qualify as transboundary shipping of toxic waste, which the treaty does not allow.

Despite the growing volume of e-waste, it is the complexity and potential toxicity of this waste stream that is considered to be more significant a problem than its sheer quantity. Many ICT products, especially older models, contain substantial quantities of hazardous substances. For example, older cathode ray tubes (CRTs) contain between four and seven pounds of lead, contributing to around 40% of the total volume of lead in U.S. landfills (3). In 2003 the High Density Packaging User Group (HDPUG) used various methodologies ranging from analytical testing to surveys and literature reviews, to categorize what they considered to be the environmentally relevant materials present in electronic equipment based on toxicity and volume (4). These chemicals are: antimony, arsenic, beryllium, bismuth, brominated compounds, cadmium, chromium, lead, mercury, nickel, and silver. In addition to these substances of concern identified by the HDPUG group, many others are often highlighted, including: halogenated and other ozone-depleting substances (i.e. CFCs), plasticizers, refractory ceramic fibers, asbestos, lithium, and copper, which, along with arsenic and nickel, can catalyze the increase of dioxins during incineration (5).

Once disposed of, ICT products can expose recycling workers to health hazards and may become a source of toxic materials that may be released into the environment by landfilling or incineration. This is an issue of particular concern in the case of informal electronics recycling in the developing world, where a typical strategy for separating out materials of value is to melt solder and plastics over open fires without protective equipment.

A recent study examining heavy metal contamination in Guiyu, China, a village heavily involved in informal e-waste recycling, found that levels of lead and copper in road dust were 371 and 155 times higher, respectively, than in a non e-waste recycling site 30 kilometers away. The contamination levels in the village were likely to pose significant health risks, particularly to children. The authors completed a follow-up study confirming that chemical body loads were correspondingly high in this region (6). Exposure to high levels of heavy metals can result in both acute and chronic health conditions ranging from damage to the nervous system and changes in blood composition to lung, kidney, and liver functioning.

E-waste is one of the most-discussed environmental problems having to do with electronics. Advocacy groups as well as governments have done a great deal to raise awareness about this issue with the hope that, among other things, voluntary household recycling rates might increase. One example of such an awareness-raising project is that of the “WEEE man,” a sculpture in the shape of a robotic humanoid constructed entirely of electronic scrap. The 3.3 tonnes of e-waste that were used to make the sculpture represent the amount that the average UK citizen will produce over the course of his or her lifetime (8).

Making things better: Green Design

With an understanding of both the social and environmental impacts of electronics, how can we continue to provide people worldwide with innovative ICT devices while tackling the environmental problems that these products currently entail? The answer, many researchers believe, lies in green design (1). The design phase is when a product or process is conceived. It is the period when ideas about how a product will function, what it will be made of, how it will look, and all of its technical parameters are defined and set down on paper. It is also the stage that most of the financial and environmental costs of the product are committed. For example, if a designer decides that a device will operate using four batteries and will be coated in red plastic, this will permanently fix certain environmental implications later on in that product’s life cycle. The red plastic will require specific additives and a certain processing energy. The consumer of the product will necessarily need to buy and use batteries. Thus, we can see that each design decision spawns a flow of impacts and consequences through time. It is for this reason that many researchers stress that it is by focusing on the design phase of a product that we can make the largest and least-expensive positive interventions on the environmental impact of a product. Though this sounds like a common sense idea, it represents a huge departure from how things used to be done (and to a large extent, still are). Throughout the history of environmental problems, many of our solutions have focused on cleaning up the mess we made (e.g. decontaminating polluted sites, filtering polluted water), or trying to fix things that we had already broken (e.g. rehabilitating damaged ecosystems). These are what are termed “end of pipe” solutions. Rather than preventing the problem in the first place, we simply come up with fancy (and often expensive) ways to minimize it after it has already become a reality. The philosophy behind green design is completely different: its goal is to think of new ways of doing things that don’t cause a problem in the first place. In many cases, this involves coming up with innovative design solutions that don’t simply replace a single material or technology with a more benign alternative, but think about finding a way to deliver the service that product provided, perhaps in an entirely new way. A straightforward example of such innovation in the electronics sector is the case of the transition from CRT to LCD displays. Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) displays, which most people are familiar with as the boxy monitors used both for televisions and computer displays prior to the proliferation of flatscreens, are the largest single source of lead in U.S. landfills. Each of these old displays contains 3-4 pounds of lead, a substance which is well-known for its neurotoxic effects, which pose particular risks for children. Rather than coming up with a more benign material to replace the lead in CRT displays, the industry moved to an entirely new technology that did not require lead at all: LCD displays. Though this change was not environmentally motivated, and has environmental implications of its own, it illustrates the kind of changes that are possible when we simply assign ourselves different design objectives. So what are the major design goals that we need to set in order to move towards truly sustainable electronics? One way to systematically uncover these is to look at the basic problems encountered at each “life stage” of electronic products:

One. Birth – Design for green materials and green manufacturing

One of the most basic priorities for designing green electronics is to select materials that are non-toxic, renewable, and have low-intensity processing requirements (use less energy, less water, fewer materials, etc.). Likewise, designers should think more carefully about the manufacturing processes that are required to carry out the design. On the level of manufacturing, we need to ensure that we’re using the most efficient and safest methods availalbe. Green manufacturing also places a priority on recycling materials (water, chemicals, etc.) and using as many renewable inputs as possible. Manufacturing options are largely dependent on the original design, but also require input and decisions further down the chain.

Of course, completely eliminating toxic and non-renewable materials is not always feasible within current technological limitations. But without setting the ideal scenario as our goal, we are certain never to achieve it. Many technological limitations exist only because we are used to doing things in a certain way. For example, we are used to inputting text using a physical keyboard. But consider the recent invention of the “virtual keyboard” that uses a laser system to project “keys” on any surface, thus escaping the need for a physical object at all. Though replacing physical with virtual keyboards is by no means an environmental priority, it is this kind of innovative thinking which could lead to the “leap-frog” technological solutions we need in order to develop truly green electronics.

Two. Life – Design for optimal lifetime, modularity, upgradeability

Electronics are what are known as extremely “low entropy” product systems. This essentially means that they require very intensive processing because they are made of very small quantities of pure materials that have to be arranged in a highly specific ways. Therefore, each electronic device represents an investment of energy, water, and time that goes far beyond the basic value of its structural materials. Every time one of these products is thrown out or recycled for its raw materials, all of that structural complexity is lost. This translates into a real loss of energy, water, chemical resources, and money.

It is for this reason that the “lifetime extension” of ICT products is considered one of the best strategies for reducing the overall environmental impact of these products (3). However, achieving this can be quite a challenge in an industry famous for its quick product turnover. The average lifespan for computers is estimated to be as short as two years according to some studies (4) and lifespans for cell phones are even shorter.

This quick turnover pace is partly the result of the speed of technological evolution in this sector (as evidenced by the yet-unbroken adherence to Moore’s infamous law). However, it is equally, if not more so, caused by changes in fashion coupled with consumers’ desire to have the latest incarnation of every technological gadget. This is often seen as an economic benefit because it leads to increased sales. As a result many companies intentionally encourage product obsolescence by, for example, making new versions of hardware and software incompatible with old versions, or even designing products that are guaranteed to break after a certain period of use. However, if we think about it in terms of invested energy and complexity, this kind of programmed obsolescence is both an economic as well as environmental loss.

Therefore, the line of thinking introduced by green design is to make the individual components in computers as long-lived as possible and to ensure that they remain compatible with newer product versions. If executed properly, such an approach doesn’t contradict individual companies’ profit motives and can even represent quite a bit of savings. For example, companies could collect the used electronic devices themselves and save large amounts of material investment by reusing key components in newer products, a strategy which has long been successfully applied by Xerox. Furthermore, even if companies opt not to reuse these longlasting components themselves, there is still plenty of profit to be made in selling upgrades, new external shells for changing the appearance of products, and devising other swappable elements for these products. This approach would require a bit of adjustment in consumer expectations and in current business models, but would ultimately result in just as much profit, but less waste.

There is, of course, a limit to the lifetime extension of ICT devices. Eventually, new, more efficient technologies become clearly superior to those used in earlier product generations. Therefore, even from an environmental perspective (e.g., for energy efficiency), it makes sense to eventually throw out the old clunkers. However, green design can also be applied to make the end-of-life stage of electronics much less impactful than it currently is.

Three. Death – Design for reuse, disassembly, and disposal

The final, major problem category that green design can be used to address is the issue of e-waste. When individual ICT devices have been used to their fullest and are finally discarded, the optimal course of action is to take all of their valuable materials and components and find ways to reuse them. Reusing whole devices followed by whole component assemblies saves the greatest amount of effort invested. However, simply finding ways to recycle the raw materials, especially considering how energy-intensive some of them are to extract (link to “Extraction” section), is also of great benefit.

With only an estimated 25% of electronics recycled in the U.S. (5), we are clearly not doing our best to recapture this material stream. One serious barrier is the lack of sufficient infrastructure for collecting used ICT products. However, a second confounding problem is the fact that these products are not designed to be disassembled at all, let alone disassembled quickly and cheaply. Currently, one of the best options for safe and effective ICT product recycling is “shredding,” which involves grinding the entire product into granules of its base materials, which then need to be separated from one another into useful fractions. Of course, this requires the loss of all structural complexity in the product. Opting for recycling through disassembly, which could preserve and reuse some of this complexity, is currently too time consuming and difficult, and therefore expensive. The solution is to actually design these products to be easily disassembled – by people, machines, or a combination of both. It is almost certain that if these materials became more cheaply recoverable, the recycling rates for ICT products would skyrocket and we might be in a position to achieve a “closed material loop” in this sector. The take-home message with all of these green design recommendations, however, is that tackling these design challenges can only lead to sustainability if they are all addressed simultaneously. Incremental improvements in each category are essential stepping stones, but the full-fledged, system wide adoption of these design foundations calls for transformative breakthroughs – both in products themselves and in the logistical systems we have in place for managing them and their waste streams. Beyond just rethinking the design of specific products, we must also redesign the system that they function within, which is perhaps the most difficult part of the challenge. Without a proper infrastructure for collecting waste materials, it doesn’t matter how well designed a product is – its value will never be recaptured. These key transformative innovations will likely rely on dematerialization, nano-scale self-assembly, self-healing materials, programmed decomposition, biological mining and recovery (for minute quantities of valuable materials), and a shift in our understanding of product ownership (perhaps moving to a model where customers “lease” rather than own materials outright – such as in the case of Interface Carpet). The ultimate goal is to create products that can cycle seamlessly through this system – on energy that is renewable, made of materials that are benign, and based on reusable feedstock. However, even beyond resolving these technical matters, there is a more persistent layer of difficult questions that need to be asked. Our current culture is based on driving economic productivity through the consumption of material goods. This consumption is explicitly encouraged by our industrial systems, despite every indication that the current volume of material throughput cannot last much longer, let alone indefinitely. A fundamental realization that we must all have, perhaps most importantly as consumers, is that we live in an economy that ranks short-term profit over quality of life and the creation of longer-term value. How do we address the fact that most people, particularly in the western world, don’t really need more products to make their lives better? Can the ICT ecosystem drive a paradigm shift to a world that focuses on quality and services rather than quantity and products? This kind of change will require more than just superficial modifications to institutions and systems. It will require cultural and structural changes. How can ICT drive these? There is a market need that is currently not being satisfied by the majority of industries, and that is a demand for quality of life. Meaningful interactions, the opportunity to deeply engage with ideas and other people, and perhaps most importantly, free time, are commodities that have become exceedingly scarce. Perhaps this is a market where ICT could flourish, creating a truly sustainable business.

Greener Electronics: Legislation, Standards, and Voluntary Programs

Governments, companies, and NGOs have hosted global conferences on ICT, established dedicated ICT task forces, written numerous reports on ICT’s potential role in sustainability, and continued to actively engage with this problem area in many other ways. It is clear that most key players are aware that there are some unmet stewardship needs surrounding the management of electronics. The difficult matter remains how to get this entire complex system to evolve in the right direction.

Many governments, unsurprisingly, favor a legislative approach. Various laws have been passed worldwide aimed at encouraging the move towards “greener” electronics. As an alternative strategy to legally mandating changes, some governments and NGOs have set up performance standards and voluntary programs. Many individual companies have also created internal environmental strategies and adopted committments for improving their performance in these areas.

However, regardless of whether the approach has originated in the public or private sector, is mandatory or voluntary, it generally falls into one of a few categories. Some of the main ones include:

Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) – EPR policies are founded on the idea that product manufacturers should retain some form of responsibility for their product over its entire life cycle. This responsiblity includes the period when the product is the posession of the consumer (i.e., the company is responsible for ensuring that unsafe devices are called back). However, most EPR policies are primarily focused on the end-of-life phase. In practice, EPR policies involve making manufacturers responsible in some fashion for the recycling of a certain quantity of their own (or technically similar) waste products. There are many variations in the details of these programs in terms of the recycling quotas, financing schemes, and creation of intermediary organizations to deal with the collection infrastructure. However, beyond ensuring that at least some quantity of e-waste is directly dealt with, one of the implicit objectives of EPR strategies is to encourage companies to modify product design to make their products easier to disassemble and reuse. The hope is that they will do this motivated by the prospect of simplifying and reducing the expense of recycling their own discarded products.

The EPR concept has been put into practice several times, with varying degrees of success. One of the first cases of implementation was the take-back and recycling program initiated in Switzerland. Two centralized organizations were created and given the responsibility for collecting and recycling different categories of e-waste. The system was not brand based, but rather product based, which some researchers claim was essential for achieving a sufficient volume of material for the program to be economically sustainable. The system was larely financed by up-front recycling fees paid by consumers at the time of product purchase. The Japanese Home Appliance Law, passed in 2001, operates using similar principles, with recycling fees charged to consumers, however unlike in the Swiss system, each producer is individually responsible for operating or outsourcing the recycling of used electronics.

One of the better-known and largest examples of an EPR policy is the European Union’s Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive (WEEE), which mandates minimum requirements for the recycling of e-waste by weight.

However, it is important to note that, thus far, EPR concepts as implemented in e-waste legislation have not been effective at encouraging changes in product design. This is because, for both economic and environmental reasons, almost all product recovery and recycling systems are collective – they handle all manufacturers’ products. While manufacturers may pay for their share of the waste collected, or their share of products produced, no system has yet been developed to provide a financial incentive for individual manufacturers to make their products easier to recycle. In addition, the collective nature of both the end-of-life system and the component supply chain makes it difficult for Original Equiment Manufacturers (OEMs) to dramatically innovate to reduce environmental impact. Another big source of contention regarding electronics recycling has been the search for an appropriate financing system. State and local governments would like to see manufacturer-financed recycling programs because not enough funding is available for government-financed options (1). However, the cost of compliance with even a single law can be a challenge for industry, and with the recent barrage of new regulations, industry has voiced that it cannot bear these costs alone. The National Electronics Product Stewardship Initiative (NEPSI) – a dialogue between stakeholders convened by the EPA in 2001 to devise a single national solution to electronics take-back and recycling was brought to an unsuccessful close when participants could not reach a consensus on the financing system for e-waste recycling. The key challenge has been that all of the proposed industry funding schemes burden different manufacturers unequally, and in every case the burdened companies have vigorously opposed the specific scheme that would disadvantage them. In response to the lack of a national solution, many U.S. states have developed their own systems, creating a regulatory patchwork. When combined with the emerging international patchwork of regulations, companies are facing quite a minefield of well-intentioned, but difficult rules to follow. For EPR policies to truly work as intended, there are clearly still several issues that need to be resolved, including: financing, international and regional uniformity, collection infrastructure, and actually connecting the costs of recycling back to product design!

Substance Bans – One of the more aggressive measures for phasing out toxic materials in products is to place outright bans on substances of particular concern. Several policies have used this strategy, of which the most notable and relevant to the electronics sector is Europe’s RoHS legislation. RoHS, which is short for ”Directive on the restriction of the use of certain hazardous substances in electrical and electronic equipment,” was adopted in February 2003 and took effect on July 1st, 2006. The law strongly restricts the use of the following six materials in electronic and electrical equipment:

• Lead (Pb)
• Mercury (Hg)
• Cadmium (Cd)
• Hexavalent chromium (Cr6+)
• Polybrominated biphenyls (PBB)
• Polybrominated diphenyl ether (PBDE)

Under RoHS, new electrical and electronic products sold in the EU are not allowed to contain any of the banned materials, though certain product categories are temporarily exempt from these rules (e.g. many kinds of medical equipment).

However, numerous questions remain about what the optimal course of action is with regards to toxic chemicals in ICT devices, even in terms of environmental considerations alone. The trade-offs of eliminating certain toxic substances for alternative materials are often uncertain and have historically led to heated debates. One of the more prominent recent discussions was on RoHS’s restriction of lead in solders, which has forced manufacturers who wish to continue sales in the EU market to switch to alternatives.

Tin-lead solders have been used for over half a century, and the forced shift to alternatives raised some concern about the performance and wider-reaching consequences of the alternatives. Lead-free solders, which generally replace the lead with a metal alloy (e.g. copper-silver or copper-nickel), have much higher melting points than tin-lead solders. Higher temperatures require more energy for application, and also require the components on circuit boards to be tolerant of higher temperatures.

Some manufacturers were worried about the effect of higher temperatures on the structural integrity of the components, such as causing the boards to warp. Another issue of concern is the formation of “tin whiskers,” which the addition of lead normally eliminates. Thin strands of tin can form, which can cause short circuits by eventually migrating to other connections or breaking off (2). It is true that the lead-free solder alternatives have a better toxic potential indicator (TPI) rating than lead-containing solders (though all have some measurable toxicity) (3).

However, in the years since the shift was made, much of the controversy around the new solders has died down, and many of the concerns about performance and structural integrity have proven to be overblown.

The case of lead can be considered exemplary for the problem of toxics substitution in electronic devices. The phase-out of brominated flame retardants has been faced with similar uncertainties.

The larger question is whether these kinds of policies are ultimately the most effective way of reaching the desired outcome of eliminating toxics in electronics. It is possible that companies will never develop alternatives without outright bans. But it is also possible that forcing companies to funnel research money into very narrow areas reduces the pool of resources that would otherwise be available for broader, more innovative research that might bypass these material concerns all together.

Energy Standards

Concern over energy efficiency and the global effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions has fueled energy policies in many sectors. As energy using products, electronics often get targeted as candidates for energy efficiency programs.

In the United States as well as in Europe, consumers have come to recognize standard energy rating schemes that inform them how well a certain product performs relative to its competitors. In the U.S., the Energy Star program is the most recognizable voluntary labeling scheme. In the European Union, several agencies are responsible for setting compulsory minimum efficiency requirements and also providing a harmonized grading scheme for energy efficiency.

The most common criticisms of these schemes is that by setting a fixed grading scale, they create an artificial ceiling (the ‘A’ level score) past which manufacturers have no incentive to innovate and improve. However, these programs have generally been considered very effective at driving improvements and raising consumer awareness.

Integrated Product Policy (IPP) and Design Frameworks

So far there are very few enacted policies that directly address green design issues or that explicitly rely on life cycle thinking. However, it appears that this may be the next wave in environmental policy for electronics and other environmentally impactful products.

One of the primary legal frameworks in this category under discussion in the EU is “the eco-design of Energy using Products (EuP) Directive.” It was enacted in the EU in 2005 and was transposed to national law in each of the individual member states in 2007. It wasn’t until January of 2009 that the first active piece of legislation was introduced under the purview of this framework.

Broadly speaking, the EuP requires producers to design products that meet specific eco-design criteria, taking into consideration their full life cycle impacts. To fall under EuP jurisdiction, products must: have sales of over 200,000 units per year in the EU, be known to have significant life cycle impact, and display a range of potential improvement in terms of eco-efficiency (4). Though the legislation refers to “energy use” in its very name, it is meant to go far beyond just energy to include many of the green design issues that have been recognized as important, including: resource consumption, recyclability, toxicity, product life time, and many others.

The success of these latest policy frameworks is yet to be seen, but there is definitely hope that they are pointing us in the right direction.