Environmental Project, 960 – Environmental Assessment of Product Concept for Electronic Products

Environmental Assessment of Product Concept for Electronic Products

Summary and conclusions

A simple method for environmental assessment of electronic products at the very early stage of product development has been developed. This methodology focuses on the concept level since experience has demonstrated that the choice of concept most often has a decisive influence on the environmental impact caused by the product in its life cycle.

It is therefore beneficial to invest some time in evaluating the environmental aspects of different possible alternative concepts bearing in mind that this has to be a rough estimate.

On the basis of several previous projects about environmental assessment of electronic products, it can be concluded that:

As regards electronic products where energy consumption is based on a central power supply, the energy consumption in the use phase is almost always an important factor in environmental impact during the life cycle.
Many electronic products consume a considerable amount of energy in standby mode, and that 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 act as a 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 higher environmental impact from the valve itself, if you can improve its functionality because this reduces the energy consumption of the overall system.
For products that spend their “active lives” in some means of transport like an aeroplane, a train, a ship etc., you must include the energy consumption used to transport the product in the entire life span. This contribution to the environmental impact can be quite significant.

Beside the technological and the environmental aspects, marketing aspects are also evaluated. It is not sufficient to develop a product that 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 achieve no environmental improvements.

Following this methodology will result in a number of “hot spots”, which form a good foundation for proposing environmentally relevant targets for the product specification and to prioritise.

So as to support the best possible diffusion of the method and the results from this project it has been integrated in the tool “A Designer's Guide to Eco-Conscious Design of Electrical & Electronic Equipment” (Eco-design Guide), which is available at http://www.ecodesignguide.dk and http://www.elektronikpanelet.dk.