Environmental Project, 960 – Environmental Assessment of Product Concept for Electronic Products – 3 Method for assessment of product concepts

Though this assessment procedure is much simpler to perform than a complete Life Cycle Assessment, it was considered appropriate to apply the same structure as it is specified in the ISO 14040 International Standard [2]. This structure includes:

Even if the environmental assessment to be carried out is a “light version”, it is considered worthwhile to define proper definitions for the goal and scope of the assessment.

This method is developed in html and is available as an interactive tool integrated into the Eco-design Guide [1]. The purpose of the following sections is merely to describe the methodology developed. For full details and reference material, see the Eco-design Guide [1].

3.1 Goal definition

When making an environmental assessment of products or product concepts, it is important to define the goals just as is the case with other projects.

This is done in order to assure that the work described in the following sections is compatible with the goals in terms of relevance and in terms of the extent of the allocated resources. The costs to perform the environmental assessment are (of course) related to the ambition level of the goals. This is illustrated by the examples below (The cost increases as you move down through the table 3.1):

In order to make it easier to set up specific goals, it can be helpful to begin by answering the questions below. Depending on the size of your company, the diversification of its products and its level of experience in integrated product policy, you can choose to deal with the questions covering the entire company, a part of the company or a specific product or type of products.

Having dealt with these questions it should (hopefully?) be possible to define the goal by answering this last question:

3.2 Scope definition

Figures from an environmental assessment are often of little interest seen on their own; they do not make sense until they are used in a comparison. Typically the figures from the assessment of one product are compared to alternatives like:

A meaningful comparison requires defining the “functional unit” that the service, the product or the system provides to the customer.

3.2.1 Functional unit

The functional unit must include a qualitative description of the service and quantification. The quantification must specify the duration of use, including the entire life span of the product. Some examples of functional units are given below:

For some products (especially consumer products) the category “Qualities” can be divided into several sub-categories some of which are essential for the functionality and therefore mandatory and some which are used to attract a certain fragment of the customers. This could be features like trendy design and certain games for a mobile phone.

When quantifying the environmental impact (see section 3.3.1), this should be consistent with the functional unit chosen.

By referring to the functional unit it is possible to compare different products that have different characteristics, e.g. to compare Paint A covering 20m²/liter requiring maintenance every 5^th year with Paint B covering 15m²/liter and requiring maintenance every 8^th year.

3.2.2 Analysis of interested parties

The product has several stakeholders. They all have various environmental expectations of the product and they all more or less influence the success the product will achieve on the market. Some of the stakeholders have no specific relation to the product itself, but are stakeholders in the company as such (e.g. stockholders, employees, neighbours, authorities). In this context we will focus on the product/stakeholder relation even though we are fully aware of the fact that some relations are more company/stakeholder relations.

The most important interested parties are listed below. Depending on the type of product, the market situation, the employment situation etc., these parties are of varying importance.

The scope of this assessment at concept level is not to make a comprehensive “Product chain survey”. The purpose is to spot important environmental impacts or expectations related to the product.

3.3 Inventory analysis

3.3.1 Product Characteristics

When making a comprehensive Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), the inventory analysis consists of collecting and presenting unambiguous data about the environmental impacts of the activities related to the entire life cycle of the product.

In this case however, it is merely the exercise of establishing a list of “Environmental hot spots” based on experience and simple evaluation methods.

Experience has made it clear that the most important environmental impact from electrical- and electronic equipment can be related to:

The impact from chemical substances used in manufacturing and/or present in the product can be quite difficult to deal with and cover too many issues even for skilled personnel. This will be dealt with in the section “Legislation”.

The consumption of energy and resources can be dealt with in a quantitative way in terms of a Primary Energy and Resource consumption (E- and R-parameter) by using the ”Calculator I” in the Eco-design guide [1].

Before we get ourselves completely absorbed in these calculations it might be worth while bearing in mind some important conclusions from previous studies of electrical- and electronic equipment. These conclusions are listed in the textbox below.

Important conclusions from previous studies of electrical and electronic equipment

Experience from several studies (Produktfamilie projektet - The Product Family Project [20], Levetids projektet - The Life-Time Project [21], Tele Danmark projektet - The Tele Danmark Project [22]) show that for electronic products where energy consumption is based on a central power supply, the energy consumption in the use phase is nearly always an important source to the environmental impact from the life cycle.
Many electronic products consume a considerable amount of energy in standby mode, and this holds a great potential for improvements that are easy to achieve.
It is important to avoid sub-optimization. This is especially important for products that constitute part of a large system. For example an automatic valve that controls the energy consumption of a large refrigeration plant can not only be assessed by focusing on the valve itself. If you include the energy consumption of the entire system you will probably conclude that you could accept a greater environmental impact from the valve itself, if its functionality can be improved as this reduces the energy consumption of the larger system.
For products that are integrated in some means of transport like an aeroplane, a train, a ship etc., you must include the energy consumption used to transport the product during the entire life span of the respective means of transport.This contribution to the environmental impact can be quite significant, and reducing the weight of the product will in itself release a considerable improvement.

3.3.2 Evaluation of alternative technology

As mentioned, at this stage in the development procedure definitive decisions concerning the physical structure of the product have not necessarily been taken. This also applies to the technologies, materials etc. that provide the basis for product functionality.

The choice of technology most often has a decisive influence on the environmental impact caused by the product in its life cycle.

Most significant environmental improvements have been achieved by applying a “cleaner technology”.

It is therefore important to invest some time in evaluating the environmental aspects of different possible alternative technologies. The environmental impact from a product based on an alternative technology can be assessed in the same way as described above (section 3.3.1).

3.3.3 Evaluation of competitor's products

Relevant competitor products can now be evaluated according to the same principles as outlined above.

3.3.4 Market analysis

It is just as important to know the market as it is to know the environmental impacts of the product. If you want to develop a product with reduced environmental impact, it is not sufficient that the new and improved product is good seen from an environmental, technical and economical point of view. If the product does not sell, you will not have any business and society will not achieve any environmental improvements.

The objective of the market survey is to benchmark your product on the market focusing in particular on environmental performance.

The position of the product should be determined in relation to the present market situation and to trends for the future. Evaluation of competitor products has already provided us with important information. However, there are several other ways to estimate your position; they will be dealt with in the following sections.

3.3.4.1 Ecolabels

A product can be positioned on the market as being environmentally friendly by achieving an ecolabel. Products that have an ecolabel rank among the top 33 per cent of products on the market within a specific product group with regard to their environmental performance.

However, it is problematic that criteria for eco-labelling have only been established for a limited number of products and almost exclusively for consumer products. Having said that it may still be useful to study the criteria for products that have similar characteristics to the product in question.

Information about eco-labelling and which types of product criteria have been established for can be obtained from:

Please note that the ecolabel only applies to the board itself and not the components.

3.3.4.2 Environmental Product Declarations (EPD)

While eco-labelling mainly focuses on consumer products, environmental product declarations (EPD) address the OEM customer. The EPD is a standardised way of expressing the environmental impact from the product in its entire life cycle. The content and the applied terminology is more complex, but it is precisely this type of information OEM-manufacturers need to enable them to sum up the environmental profile of the “end-product” in the form of an EPD, as part of the documentation for an ecolabel or a life cycle assessment.

3.3.4.3 Customer demands

Dealing with precise demands from present customers is usually not very complicated.

However coping with the expectations of potential customers at some point in the future is a somewhat more uncertain exercise.

The different guidelines for green procurement that have already been issued provide an insight into the demands of the future. The Danish Environmental Protection Agency (Miljøstyrelsen) has issued a number of such guidelines specifying their environmental expectations for different product groups.

Guidelines for environment-friendly procurement have been issued at national level [13] as well as at EU level [14].

3.3.5 Legislation

Electrical and electronic equipment has caught the authorities' attention, primarily because of the rising amounts of waste and the disposal problems linked to these products.

As a consequence of this since the early nineties much attention has been given to legislation in this area, starting in Germany, Denmark, The Netherlands, Sweden and Norway, as well as at EU level.

The regulations also introduce producer responsibility with regard to the disposal of these products and require that the producer provides the recycler with information about e.g. the content of environmentally hazardous parts and possibilities for recycling.

3.3.6 End of life

The End-of-life will not be dealt with in any further detail at this stage. End-of-life is dealt with in the Eco-design Guide [1], section “Eco-Design Guidelines /End-of-life”.

3.4 Impact Assessment

3.4.1 SWOT analysis

SWOT means Strength, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. This can be related to the existing review in the concept phase. This methodology addresses these four themes in each of the life cycle phases of the product.

When this task has been completed, you will have identified the "hot spots" for your product!

3.4.2 Setting up targets and objectives for the product specification

By prioritizing the options for possible target settings you should evaluate the individual issues by regarding the significance for the environmental impact and your company's influence on the particular issue. See the figure below.

By following the procedure described above the product development team will have acquired a basic understanding of the environmental aspects of the product seen over the entire life span. On the basis of this understanding it is possible to set up environmental targets and objectives for the specification of the product and the continuation of the product development process.

This general knowledge and the conclusions summarised in table 4.2 constitute a good foundation for proposing environmentally relevant target settings for the product specification. These proposals for environmentally relevant target settings can form a part of the overall prioritising in the product development procedure.

At this stage one might also have discovered environmental issues that are not sufficiently clarified. Thus the knowledge acquired will also serve as a basis for decisions about e.g. an in-depth environmental assessment of one or more specific issues.

A draft report has been prepared based on this Assessment Procedure for a product from Focon Electronic Systems A/S, Denmark. [1], Download page.