Global digital data generation has been growing at a breakneck pace. Although not all generated data needs to be stored, a non-trivial portion does. Synthetic deoxyribonucleotide acid (DNA) is an attractive medium for digital information storage. If kept under appropriate conditions, DNA can reliably store information for thousands of years. It also has a practical estimated density of 1 Exabyte per cubic inch, which is much higher than commercial data storage media. Buildings, infrastructure, electronic computing, storage, and networking equipment, and other physical resources all contribute to the environmental impacts, particularly, emissions, energy and water consumption, and waste generation of digital data storage. DNA data storage has the potential to limit these impacts by drastically reducing the resources required to maintain very large volumes of data. In this paper, we describe how to store digital information in synthetic DNA, present a cradle-to-grave life cycle assessment (LCA) of archival DNA data storage, and compare the resulting environmental impacts with those of traditional hard disk drives (HDDs) and tape storage based on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, energy usage, and blue water consumption (BWC). We conclude that DNA shows promise when compared to HDDs and tape, and we follow that conclusion with a discussion of how further innovation in biotechnology could be used to improve the sustainability of future datacenters.
This paper focuses on the investigation of a business model in the BoP markets. Combing the scenario analysis, the life cycle assessment is conducted in the study. After the simulation, the results indicate that the major contributors of environmental impacts are use (75.6%) and disposal of (24.2%) stages. The contribution of transportation and collection stages is less than 0.2%. The Fossil fuel depletion and the Respiratory Inorganic potential were the most significant environmental impact categories after normalization and weighting based on Eco-indicator 99 method. It concludes that the hot environmental spot of a mobile phone occurs in the use of phone. The outcomes could provide important information for promoting BoP business models, including the design of products due to the consideration of sustainability.
In this study, a technology process including wet grinding, sieving and vacuum separation was proposed to recycle materials from waste liquid crystal display panel (LCDP). A wet crusher was used to break the glass and polarizing film of LCDP into granule first. Most liquid crystal molecules (94.10 wt. %) would be cleaned from LCDP under the impact of crusher and stayed in water. When the particle size of solid granule is less than 0.18 mm, the composition is pure glass, which accounted for 69.97 wt. % of the total granule. Pure polarizing film presents at more than 0.80 mm of particle size, which accounted for 11.47 wt. % of the total granule. The granule between 0.18~0.80 mm, which contains glass and polarizing film bonded together, would be sent back to crusher to dissociate again. The glass part of LCDP contains indium of 219 ppm. Vacuum carbothermal reduction was employed to recycle indium from the glass part of LCDP. Based on the orthogonal optimization experiment, the optimal parameters were 950 °C, 30 min, 30 wt. % carbon adding amount and 1 Pa. Indium can be separated from the indium tin oxide (ITO) of glass part selectively. The recovery ratio of indium was 93 wt. %. During the physical process, all the valuable materials including indium, glass and organic materials can be recycled efficiently and eco-friendly, and there are no hazardous materials produced.
The aim of the work was to ensure the after-market supply of an industrial robot handheld terminal independently from the original equipment manufacturer. Therefore, a remanufacturing process was developed. Additionally, an upcycling of the unit was realized by fixing the malfunctions of the original handheld terminal. Initially the malfunctions of the original handheld terminal were analyzed. Based on the results of this analysis a requirement specification of a remanufactured handheld terminal was developed. The necessary remanufacturing process consists out of six steps. Following this the original handheld terminal was dismantled and all components were classified. The wearing and defective components had to be reproduced. For this purpose, a redesign was used. For every reproduced part the most economic manufacturing process was chosen. The generated results were used to manufacture a prototype of the upcycled handheld terminal. Also the supply chain for the remanufactured and upcycled handheld terminal was elaborated.
When introducing LEDs in automotive lighting, the first achieved benefit was the reduction of the power consumption combined with an extended lifetime. Nevertheless, with the maturity level the technology tends to reach and the growing importance of the lighting design in the automotive market, electronic designers must deal with more important constraints, that in turns lead to higher driving current, then less expected lifetime. These restrictions could deal with mechanical interfaces - that are related either with the housing shape or with the mechanical constraints associated to the assembly module. Optical systems with glass inclination have also a great influence on the required flux, thus leading to more thermal constraints. Global tendency is also to go to more complex circuitries or integrated SoC ones. Therefore, resistive and linear drivers are more and more replaced with high-efficiency DC-DC converters managed by microcontrollers. Due to these constraints among others, doing a reliable and sustainable design becomes more complex. Hardware designers must keep in mind universal models for reliability prediction of electronics components, PCBs and equipment, so that the module may last more than the expected vehicle lifetime.
Closing the loop for products, components and materials loop promotes resource efficiency. Loop-closing approaches extend the traditional value chain through collection, refurbishment or reprocessing value steps and through new actors and stakeholders in the business environment becoming relevant. The once linear value chains of companies or industries are extended; or linked between industries; re/decomposed; and new value constellations may emerge. Remanufacturing, re-use and recycling approaches entail a multiple-times value creation which includes sustaining value beyond the original new product lifecycle. The paper conceptualises and illustrates a new, environmental sustainable value creation logic from business models. It applies the innovation strategy concept by Slowak and Regenfelder (2016). This is to depict how case studies of the European project sustainablySMART, namely the example of PuzzlePhone, do innovate. This paper extracts the practice of innovators combining technological, organisational and business environment related innovation for closing the materials loop from industry evidence. We discuss how existing business models require change and in that context, value chains are altered.
Currently a range of modular smartphones is emerging, including the Fairphone 2, Puzzlephone, Google's Project ARA, RePhone, LG's G5 and others. In an industry of perceived short product cycles a modular design concept might become crucial for longer product lifetimes. The paper provides an overview on latest product developments and assesses these against environmental criteria, including longevity, durability, upgradeability, repairability and Design for Recycling and Reuse. Modular product design however is not necessarily the most sustainable design option. Modularity first of all means inevitably more material consumption, as additional sub-housing and universal connectors are required, partly also a larger total product volume to allow for incorporation of the maximum potential configuration and anticipated future technologies. This has to pay off through a significantly longer use of individual devices and modules. It depends furthermore on the user, if the intended replacement of broken modules by new ones helps to keep whole devices in use much longer or if the user just replaces individual modules much more frequently to keep pace with latest technology features.
We previously proposed sustainability indicators to evaluate information and communication technology solutions and services. These sustainability indicators are based on the following concepts: (1) the triple bottom line forms the basis of the evaluation criteria, (2) the same unit is used for every evaluation criterion, and (3) the sustainability indicators can be used to measure a diverse range of ICT solutions and services with different goals. The sustainability indicators are divided into four layers for simplicity, and the triple bottom line and “satisfaction” constitute the first layer. Since the notion of “society” is broad, this layer is further split into “safety”, “health”, and “comfort” then positioned in the second layer. The third layer includes indicators such as “information security” and “ubiquity” from the ICT perspective. In this paper, we propose a new layer consisting of improved sustainability indicators of “decreased social loss”, “decreased business cost”, “decreased user's cost”, “increased business chance”, and “decreased user's cost”. These indicators make it possible to distinguish positive/negative impact as well as target stakeholders of the provided additional value of the ICT solutions and services. We estimated the improved indicators using example ICT services.
Public authorities have an important role to play in mainstreaming green procurement for ICT. However, a life-cycle thinking approach in the procurement process is necessary today. Several LCA studies have shown that the manufacturing phase of ICT products have a proportionally increasing environmental impact as compared to the use phase. Thus, extension of the service life of ICT products has been identified as the main strategy for minimising the total environmental impact of ICT products. Against this background, the German Federal Environment Agency (UBA) commissioned the Oeko-Institute and the TU Berlin to assess the ecological and economic impact of various IT solutions in federal authorities in Germany. The focus was on desktop computers, notebooks and mini computers. Based on the results, the study identifies the most appropriate IT solutions for the public authorities and formulates a six point plan in order to lower the environmental and resource burden of the procurement practices.
Although competitors from low-cost countries are pushing manufacturers to lowering prices and replace the production [1] at the expense of quality, the definition of new scenarios through research and development seems the best way to succeed. This paper seeks to explain why companies should invest in the redesign of household appliances when there is a potential improvement in the sustainability of the product. This work considers home appliances investigating their disassembly, the updating of components and the management of end of life, combined with their connectivity and the communication with the final user. This research develops a multi-criteria model to select among the major appliances the most suitable to redesign, providing a ranking of alternatives. The analysis is based on the potential improvement on eco-design of products, determined on eight relevant criteria about sustainability and relationship between users and appliances. This study attempts to prove that business models based on Multi Criteria Decision Aid (MCDA) methodology, combined with two design approaches to sustainability, are able to move from linear to circular economy. Waste management and product refurbishment - through Design by Components focused on product maintenance and replacement of its parts - are, in fact, key aspects to achieve valuable results. The paper proposes an analysis of this decision process, synthesizing the most critical aspects and the result of a Multi Criteria Decision Aid intervention [2].
Product Policy can contribute considerably towards reaching the goals of resource policy. Foremost contributions to resource efficiency can be expected by improved durability and recyclability of products or components. With regard to circular economy, specifically the recycling of precious and special metals and of plastics from waste of electrical and electronic equipment is an unresolved challenge. Thereby it is important that design measures match with the possibilities of the waste treatment. The article elaborates these in more detail and exemplifies it for information and communication technologies (ICT), like durability of ICT and the recycling of hard disks drives, printed circuit boards and batteries.
Repair is a way to extend the life of a product. In a circular economy where resource loops are closed to a maximum extent, repair belongs to the `inner loops'. Repairing a product is a way to preserve value by slowing down the product's economic devaluation. The aim of the paper is the development of a reparability indicator: a measure to determine the ease of repair of a product. The indicator is developed for self-repair: repair done in a noncommercial context, by laypersons who lack access to a specialized workshop. Given the large diversity of products on the market, it was decided to focus on consumer electronic products. The paper consists of two parts. The first part is a review of the literature on (design for) reparability of electronic products, and on the development of repair indicators. A commonly used reparability indicator was empirically tested with 25 Dutch participants. This part concludes that the currently available guidelines, criteria and indicators provide a valuable starting point, but tend to lack structure, clarity and organization. The second part of the paper highlights the development of an improved reparability indicator. The first step for this was to `crowdsource' repair criteria from the MOOC Circular Economy: an Introduction, which ran from October - December on the edX platform. One of the assignments in the MOOC was the development of repair criteria. Almost 2000 discrete entries were analysed, grouped and structured into 26 repair criteria. These have been tested for consistency with a group of 46 students of TU Delft in March 2016. The paper will present the results of this test as well as the improved reparability indicator.
The product-related assessment of progress towards crucial environmental aspects is important to steer the process of eco-innovation. Indicators must be simple and easy to apply, but they must give reliably information about the status and condition of a system to the involved stakeholders. Indicators must hence be selected aspects from a complex system. The forthcoming paper addresses this demands within the development of a product-specific indicator setup by means of the consideration of energy and resource efficiency as well as product quality. Today energy efficiency dominates in the product-related environmental protection. The result is that indicators address the energy consumption, in particular in the use phase, as the priority aspect in the consideration of the environmental impact of products. In a product the performance and lifetime should increase, whereas energy and resource consumption should decrease. A case study on LED lighting systems where chosen to empirically verify and show the application of the developed SERI - “Specific Energy and Resource Indicator”. Looking into detail, two LED lighting systems were compared by using the SERI. The comparison shows the possibilities of the indicator, but also the weaknesses.
Waste printed circuit boards(PCB) is a typical electronic waste, which contains a variety of metals and non-metal, if they are disposed improperly, not only will cause loss of resources, but also harmful to environment and human health. Microbial technology is applied to the extraction of metals from electronic waste because of its environmental friendly features. Bioleaching metals from gantry pylons, PCB and the sludge from PCB production line were reviewed in this article. The current use of microbial technology in electronic waste among the optimal experimental conditions, strain selection and domestication were also explored, finally, the application foreground and development of microbial technology is prospected on this basis.
The objectives of `feasibility study for setting-up reference values to support the calculation of recyclability/recoverability rates of electr(on)ic products' commissioned by the Joint Research Centre are to define key harmonized methodological aspects to develop reference values on recycling and recovery rates (RR rates) of materials and components for electr(on)ic products to calculate recyclability and recoverability rates of products, and to assess the benefits and limitations associated to the development of such reference values. To quantify the recycling and recovery rates of materials and components, the focus was set on the use of data on RR rates compiled to comply with the reporting requirements of the WEEE directive and combined with analyses of the input composition. The frame set by the European Waste Framework Directive and the Cenelec EN and TS 50625 standards served as a methodological basis to define the requirements on the data. The methodology was tested on two case studies. The development of the reference values using a harmonized scope of the calculation and harmonized methods would provide common data reflecting the economically running treatment processes used by Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) treatment operators for calculating recyclability and recoverability rates of products. The calculated recyclability and recoverability rates of products can be used as one of the indicators of the material efficiency of a product, and integrated into further environmental assessments. The method provides new opportunities to link product design and recycling, as well as to enhance the dialogue between the stakeholders.
ProSUM - Latin for “I am useful” - aims to provide better information on raw materials from secondary origins. It focuses in particular on the content of Critical Raw Materials (CRMs) from Batteries (BATT), Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE), End of Life Vehicles (ELV) and Mining Wastes (MIN) available for processing in Europe. However, data for these products are usually very scattered amongst a variety of institutions, including government agencies, universities, NGOs and industry. This deficit is addressed in this H2020 funded project. ProSUM will establish a European network of expertise on secondary sources of CRMs, vital to today's high-tech society. It coordinates efforts to collect secondary CRM data and collate maps of stocks and flows for materials and products in the “urban mine”. The project will construct a comprehensive inventory identifying and mapping CRM stocks and flows across the European Union (EU). Via a user-friendly, open-access Urban Mine Knowledge Data Platform (EU-UMKDP), it will combine and relate them to primary raw materials data from the EU-FP7 Minerals4EU project and communicate the results online through the future European Geological Data Infrastructure (EGDI) at large. It will also provide update protocols, standards and recommendations to maintain and expand the EU-UMKDP in the future.
Planned obsolescence has recently been a common allegation to manufacturers, but proof apart from isolated cases is missing. This paper analyses the situation for smartphones, looks at use- and lifetime of smartphones and the underlying reasons for their obsolescence. Surveys show that a majority of consumers believes in “planned obsolescence” as a fact on the market and would like to have more durable products. Regarding smartphones, broken screens and bad battery performance are often reported problems. At the same time, most phones are still functioning when being replaced after the average use time of two years. How do these two aspects combine? Short product cycles, new functionalities and features trigger replacement purchases (functional and psychological obsolescence) more strongly than broken devices. Necessary repair of products is expensive due to miniaturized product design, glued in batteries, and the limited availability of replacement parts (economical obsolescence). Besides, buying new products is often subsidized by provider contracts.
Until January 2015, industry had applied for the continuation of more than 30 exemptions listed in Annex III of Directive 2011/65/EU (RoHS Directive), which otherwise would have expired in July 2016. These exemptions allow the use of substances which the RoHS Directive restricts, among others highly important exemptions like the use of cadmium in electrical contacts, mercury in compact fluorescent lamps (energy saving lamps), lead in high melting point solders, lead in ceramics and glass of electrical and electronic components.The paper will give an overview on the background and experiences of the review procedure for the above-mentioned core exemptions. The review process started in June 2015 and ended in June 2016, and introduce the background of the reviewers' recommendations to the European Commission. The paper should be read in the context of the review reports [1], [2].
Fairphone - a Dutch social enterprise -is trying to reduce the social and environmental problems in electronics manufacturing and therefore producing a “fair” smartphone. There first product was the Fairphone 1 in 2013, followed by the Fairphone 2 in 2016. To evaluate Fairphone's approach and achievements, Fraunhofer IZM together with Deutsche Umwelthilfe conducted an expert survey on “How sustainable is the Fairphone 2?” The Fairphone was considered best practice towards more sustainable electronics. Aspects such as conflict-free materials and steps towards better working conditions at manufacturing sites in China were rated positive. Especially the modular design of the Fairphone 2 and Fairphone's transparency on all steps, costs, achievements, and drawbacks was emphasized as outstanding in the smartphone market. Nevertheless, experts also mentioned further improvement potential for Fairphone such as procuring more materials from “fair” certified sources and extending of the modular design approach from repairable to upgradeable.
This paper presents work carried out to address the shortage of a reliable means for determining the future arisings of historic WEEE levels in Ireland. By using modelling techniques in conjunction with available databases, researchers were able to determine WEEE levels and historic WEEE percentages for Ireland over the period of 2000 to 2020. The data generation focused on those EEE types which contribute the largest amounts of WEEE each year by weight, namely the cooling, large domestic appliance and television WEEE categories and were the source of contention about the continued use of visible fees. The model used was developed previously by UNU to examine total WEEE generated and has been tailored specifically to Ireland using data gathered from a number of disparate sources including housing stock and penetration rates of appliances to examine only historic WEEE generated. The model outputs have been processed to determine EEE sales and total WEEE figures, as well as the historic to non-historic WEEE ratio in the market for each of the 20-year period of interest from year to year. Relevant model outputs for all WEEE categories considered are presented in this paper, along with the associated sampled data findings used to validate the model findings. historic WEEE percentages (of total WEEE) across the 3 categories of interest are still significant contributors to the annual WEEE in Ireland, comprising 69% for Cooling and Freezing, 59% for Large Appliances and 77% for Television WEEE. These model results and associated predictions were validated using a statistically significant sampling of the WEEE categories of interest in Ireland over the course of one year. Cooling and Freezing, Large Household Appliance (LHA) and TV WEEE were sampled at regular intervals at a number of different locations in order to determine the actual breakdown of historic vs. non-historic WEEE in the market for these goods. Furthermore, it allows for an annual process of measurement and corroboration to be implemented going forward and informs national discussions on the continued use of visible fees.
