Assessment of product concepts |
When performing 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 consumption of energy and – resources can be dealt with in a quantitative way in terms of an E-paramter and a R-parameter by using the ”Calculator I”.
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. Important conclusions....
The impact from chemical substances used in manufacturing and/or present in the product can be quite difficult and comprehensive to deal with even for skilled personnel. It will be referred to in the coming section about “legislation”. If you want put focus on chemical substances see the Tools for identification of listed chemicals!
Read more about those problematic chemicals which are used in electronics.
As mentioned earlier there has at this stage in the development procedure not necessarily been taking any definitive decisions concerning the physical structure of the product. This consequently also counts for the technologies, materials etc. that provides the basis of the product functionality.
The alternative technology most often has a decisive influence of the 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 to evaluate 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.
Relevant competitor products can now be evaluated according to the same principles as outlined above.
Knowledge about the market is as least as important as knowledge about the environmental impacts of the product. If you want to develop a product with reduced environmental impact it is not sufficient to end up with a product that is good from an environmental, technical and economical point of view. If the product will not sell you will not have any business and the society will not obtain any environmental improvements.
The objective of the market survey is to benchmark your product on the market with respect to environmental performance.
The position of the product should be determined in proportion to the present situation on the market and to the trends for the future. From the evaluation of competitor product we already know something. Some other ways to estimate your position will be dealt with in the following sections
A way to position your product on the market as environmentally “friendly” is to achieve an ecolabel. The intention is that products having an ecolabel are among the best third of the products on the market with respect to environmental performance. Read more.
The criteria sets for ecolabbeling are thus excellent as general trendsetters.
The problem is that the criteria sets have only been prepared for a limited number of products, and almost all are consumer products. It can however be useful to study the criteria sets for products which have similar characteristics as the case product.
Information about ecolabelling and for which products criteria sets have been prepared can be obtained from:
A criteria document for ecolabelling of Printed Wiring Boards (PWB) for the Nordic ecolabel “Svanen” has been issued in October 2003. This consists of:
Please notice that this ecolabelling only covers the board itself without components.
As ecolabelling is mainly focussing on consumer products the environmental product declaration (EPD) addresses the OEM customer. The EPD expresses a standardised way to express 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 the OEM-manufacturer needs to be able to sum up the environmental profile for the “end-product” in the shape of an EPD, as part of the documentation for an ecolabel or a life cycle assessment.
Read more about the Three types of ecolabels.
Dealing with precise demands from present customers is usually not so complicated.
To cope with the expectations that potential customers might have some time in the future is a somewhat more uncertain exercise.
You can get an idea of what kind of demands you might be facing from the different guidelines for green procurement that have been issued. The Danish Environmental Protection Agency (Miljøstyrelsen) have issued a number of such guidelines specifying their environmental expectations for different product groups.
Public purchasing and guidelines for public purchasing kan be found at http://www.mst.dk/ , Look at Produkter & Industri / Renere produkter / Offentlige grønne indkøb (only in Danish).
Public purchasing is also an issue in the EU. Read more.
Some of the bigger companies have prepared documents specifying the expectations they have to their suppliers as such and to the products supplied. Read examples of such documents from Ericsson and Volvo.
Concerning the presence of certain chemical substances in products/components supplied the Volvo Group has issued some lists:
| Black list | Chemical substances which must not be used within the Volvo Group. |
| Grey List | Chemical substances whose use shall be limited and “….active work shall be performed to find less hazardous alternatives….” |
| White list | Suggestions for acceptable alternatives to chemical substances and corresponding processes to the ones on the black – and grey lists |
The relevant legislation has been dealt with in Tutorial section / Legislation.
The End-of-life will not be dealt with in any further detail at this stage. Read more about End-of-life from the section “Eco-Design Guidelines /End-of-life”.