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Sustainable Electronic Roadmap and Forum Summary; Sustainable Electronics Forum, October 15-18, 2012, Racine, WI
Citation:
Sahle-Demessie, E. AND J. L. McCulley. Sustainable Electronic Roadmap and Forum Summary; Sustainable Electronics Forum, October 15-18, 2012, Racine, WI. U.S. EPA Office of Research and Development, Washington, DC, EPA/600/R-13/285, 2012.
Impact/Purpose:
U.S EPA/ORD in cooperation with The Johnson Foundation and the Green Electronics Council convened an international forum on sustainable Electronics to address major research challenges, policy issues and opportunities facing the management of electronic products. The Forum brought together a small, focused group of recognized leaders in electronics design, materials, manufacturing and recycling to develop a shared vision and technology roadmap for sustainable electronics; produce specific recommendations for research agendas, standards and design challenges; and accelerate green electronic voluntary initiatives. The Forum developed a shared vision of the appearance of truly sustainable electronics and provides clear end-goals for design standards development. Promote the integration of end-of-life (EoL) considerations into front-end product designs, discuss methods to extend the useful life of electronic products and assess the optimal amount of time to keep products in operation, supported the creation of environmental criteria for refurbished equipment, address other high-priority questions and challenges identified by the stakeholder community.
Description:
The Roadmap presents critical issues and research questions for each theme. For Theme 1, the issues for limiting the harm from materials and process in electronics industry include identifying the chemicals in products, production process, in the extraction of virgin materials, in end-of-life processing, and determining methods to eliminate hazardous materials across the life cycle. Test methods are needed to verify the materials and chemicals in products, develop benign chemical alternatives and compared to existing and alternative materials and processes result in reducing emissions and improve recycling and recovery. Changing the mindset and culture of the chemical industry to incorporate sustainable principles is major challenge. For Theme 2, the sustainable resource optimization comprises of sustainable inputs (e.g., minimal use of critical minerals and virgin materials) and outputs (e.g., zero waste and maximum recycling). The key goal for sustainable resource optimization is to obtain radically better closed-loop resource management. To have closed-loop material requires improved collection of electronic products for end-of-life management, designing products for ease in disassembly, efficient tracking of devices, optimal materials recovery and minimal materials use, increase the transparency of material flows throughout the life cycle, improve system design optimization and process control. The important research questions include does bio-based of content of plastics negatively impact their recycling, what are the tradeoffs between durability/longevity and lightness/energy-efficient attributes, what is the best way to draft a criterion that will incentivize recycling of critical materials, what is the average lifespan of an electronic product before it is disposed. For Theme 3 deals on resource protection and the goals for the next two decades is for ICT manufacturing and end-of-life processes to realize zero net energy and water use while taking steps to maximize biodiversity. The issues are ways of maximize the benefits of ICT applications and decrease manufacturing and supply chain energy use, with the goal of zero net energy and carbon dioxide from manufacturing, decrease net water use and improve the appropriateness of manufacturing facilities’ locations, and ways for increasing biodiversity. Studies are needed to develop models for a more efficient water and energy use and to better understand the benefits of biodiversity. For Theme 4, the goal for community enrichment for the industry to be responsibly extract all manufacturing inputs, use no materials sourced from conflict areas and ensure environmental justice for all communities including developing a procedure to guarantee prior and informed consent before a new mine is opened, create models to bring together the formal and informal recycling sectors. The research questions include what is the best way to measure positive and negative impacts of ICT manufacturing at various levels of the supply chain, how can benefits be defined and what indicators can be developed to measure benefits. Theme 5 focuses on safe and fair working Conditions. The goals are to have all ICT hardware manufactured in facilities with best-in-class health and environmental safety and no forced overtime or child labor. Research is needed to identify best-in-class environmental standards, adopt comprehensive health monitoring and industrial hygiene monitoring, and International Labor Organization conventions on living wages, child labor, and developing meaningful indicators for social impacts. Theme 6 covers developing business models so that all decisions throughout the supply chain are aligned with sustainability objectives. Internalizing all costs throughout the life cycle, require increase product utilization by novel methods, such as lease models, investigate the role of consumers and research consumer behavior, improve corporate culture and governance to enable sustainability.