Eco-Design Guidelines:

Production

The sources to environmental impacts from the production or manufacturing stage are consumption of energy, water and ancillary substances. Waste and emissions are typical outputs.

Typical processes with connection to the electronics industry are:

• Metal forming
  
• Plastics forming
  
• Adhesion (soldering, gluing, welding, brazing)
  
• Surface treatment
  
  

The forming processes are characterised by energy consumption and use of lubricants. If the forming processes are cutting, they will result in waste, which is however typically recycled.

The adhesive processes can be accompanied by emissions of organic solvent (gluing) or welding fumes from welding. This means that they can cause severe problems in the working environment.

Surface treatment (paint, metallic surfaces etc.) usually involves several chemicals (mainly solvents), of which many can be undesired (list of undesired substances).

Optimisation should not be performed within one life cycle stage. This may lead to suboptimisation. It should be kept in mind that the environmental impact of a product is the sum of the environmental impacts through the whole lifetime of the product. This is especially relevant when considering surface treatments. Would the use of another surface treatment lead to the use of a material, which is harmful or difficult to recycle? Production processes must never be considered isolated without caring about other consequences it may have.