Sustainable Life Cycle Engineering of an Integrated Desktop

Sustainable Life Cycle Engineering of an Integrated Desktop PC; A SME Perspective By David Mc. Namara 31 -Oct-2013

� ICT Reasons for Report products are full of environmental and sustainability issues. (conflict minerals, power consumption, recycling). � To engineer the lifecycle by using an environmentally friendly approach to the design. � Backed up by an environmentally friendly PC.

SME (Small to Medium � SME Enterprise) has no control over the selection materials for manufacture. � They can only choose off-the-shelf specifications. � Because of this they need to choose best available components such as: • Low energy consumption. • Reduced toxicity • Facilitate component exchange. � Choose to manufacture casing themselves

A SME Life Cycle Perspective

Key Findings 5 Decision Points during SME use phase in relation to above graph: 1. 2. 3. What the user should do when finished with product? • Life extension, stay with user longer. • Add emotional element to design. What should a collection facility do? • Refurbishment. • PC needs to be easy to disassemble. If recycled, should PC be dismantled manually or mechanically? • Manually dismantled will achieve better recovery rates. • Depends on labour costs

Key Findings Cont. . 4. 5. If exported as waste can it be manually dismantled and returned for final treatment? • If incentives are accurate, then informal sector can be engaged to trade. • Again ease of disassembly needed. Once dismantled can downstream markets be found for all materials? • Plastic casings have no downstream market • If needed to be stored for long periods, informal trading could commence.

Key Findings Cont. . Case Study

Disassembly � Complete disassembly allowed the complete separation of the system into its separate parts. � The process took 3 min and 39 seconds with only a Phillips head screwdriver

Conclusions � Life cycle of electronic equipment can be very complex given global reach of products. � The SME cannot engineer the life cycle to achieve the best environmental outcome. � However the SME can help by choosing only the most environmentally friendly systems possible. � This would make manufacturers think twice about producing poor environmentally friendly products if there is no market for them.

Questions?