Page 242 - Design for Environment A Guide to Sustainable Product Development

CHAPTER 11

Electronic

Equipment

Industries

Overview
Electronic equipment manufacturers include makers of computers
and peripherals, telephone and telecommunications equipment, and a
large variety of electronic devices used by consumers and industrial
facilities. The global electronics industry was among the first to adopt
DFE, as mentioned in Chapter 1. In the early 1990s, the American Elec-
tronics Association formed a DFE task force to develop basic princi-
ples and best practices and published a series of white papers on the
topic. Contributors to this initiative included AT&T, HP, IBM, Xerox
and the Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation
(MCC). Subsequently, the Institute for Electrical and Electronic Engi-
neers (IEEE) launched an annual Symposium on Electronics and the
Environment, which continues to be an important forum for sharing
research and applications in the field of DFE.
The electronics industry is relatively young compared to tradi-
tional “smokestack” industries but nevertheless has a significant en -
vironmental footprint. Semiconductor fabrication is one of the most
resource-intensive of all industries. For example, it has been estimated
that production of a 2-gram 32MB memory chip can require as much
as 1,200 grams of fossil fuels, 72 grams of chemicals, and 32,000 grams
of water. Chips are much more material-intensive than traditional
products; the estimated weight ratio of production inputs to the final
product is over 600 for a memory chip, compared to about 2 for an
automobile or 4 to 5 for an aluminum can [1]. Moreover, electronic
products tend to become obsolete rapidly, and recycling efforts have
struggled to keep pace with the mounting flow of electronic waste. As
discussed in Chapter 3, the European Union issued the WEEE direc-
tive to assign responsibility to manufacturers for waste recovery.

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