Towards an integrated product design for environment:

Greener Electronics

In $2017,$ Greenpeace published a revised Guide to Greener Electronics. The guide examines

three areas of sustainability metrics: renewable energy and climate change, sustainable design

and resource use, and hazardous chemical elimination: products and supply chain. Among the

seventeen companies assessed, only four companies $($Fairphone$,$ Apple, Dell, HP$)$ scored A$,$ B

or B$$ in these metrics, indicating significant improvements are still lacking among most global

electronics manufacturers.

Fairphone is a small manufacturer of mobile or cell phones that largely focuses on European

markets. Its main aim is to design a phone and a supply chain to build it that does not exploit its

workers or the planet. By relying on modular design, the company demonstrates that it is

possible to make it easy to repair and upgrade mobile phones. The unique solution Fairphone

offers is the design that improve product longevity, recycling and re$-$used of closed$-$loop

materials, facilitated by a takeback programme for all EU customers.

Fairphone reportedly uses $50$ per cent of recycled plastics and tungsten. Its efforts to publish

detailed materiality assessment reports drove the electronic sectors to confront the social and

environmental impacts of ten prioritized materials: copper, cobalt, gallium, gold, indium, nickel,

tantalum$,$ tin, tungsten and rare earths. Some of these materials are $$conflict minerals$$ that might

directly or indirectly support non$-$state armed groups in the mining countries, threaten the health

of workers during the extraction and processing activities, and involve child or forced labour.

These problems demand more transparency. Fairphone provides information about its supply

chain in a map, detailed life$-$cycle analysis, restrictions on hazardous chemicals inside its phones.

Fairphone has eliminated some hazardous materials such as PVC and those required by the

Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive $($RoHS$).$ Greenpeace urged Fairphone to publish a

complete restricted substances list for both product and process chemicals.

Membership of the Clean Electronics Production Network $($CEPN$)$ also means Fairphone has

committed to zero exposure of workers to toxic chemicals in the electronics production process.

Apple has invested heavily to use $100$ per cent renewable energy to power its data centres, and it

is among the first companies to succeed in extending this commitment to its suppliers upstream.

A significant ambition Apple announced is the elimination of the reliance on mining of new

minerals through using $100$ per cent closed$-$loop sources. One big challenge Apple faces is that

the design of its devices does not make it easy to repair or upgrade them, meaning the lives of the

devices cannot be extended easily. This strategy makes it easier to pick and choose the latest

technologies, risking Apple$$s environmental reputation and the potential switch to a repairable

and module mobile phone design. Even though Apple offers a takeback scheme, it was not able

to fully disclose the returns of used materials to its devices and their recycling contents.

Apparently, the $$must shred$$ agreement with its partners means some recycled phones are

destroyed rather than being repaired or refurbished. Apple needs to be more transparent about its

progress toward its closed$-$loop ambition, by reporting the total resource consumed and the

amount of material obtained and used from the closed$-$loop material flows. There is also a need

to rethink the design of the devices instead of relying on the use of proprietary screws and

adhesive that make it harder to disassemble. Pressure from the $$right to repair$$ legislation in

several US states is mounting. In the EU the initial focus on right to repair fridges, freezers,

dishwasher, washing machines and televisions can be extended to mobile phones and

computers. Apple would need to rethink how its phones are designed, repaired, upgraded,

disassembled for recycling.

Apple has lots of experience in designing its laptops for disassembly. Despite its design of the

LIAM robot that can disassemble one iPhone model, many new iPhones are designed to be

impossible to disassemble. Apple publishes a list of its top $200$ manufacturing suppliers, it

publishes a product restricted substances list $($PRSL$)$ and manufacturing restricted substances list

$($MRSL$).$ Apple was among the first companies to eliminate the use of PVC and has now gone

beyond the RoHS requirements. Many other electronics manufacturers assessed by Greenpeace

either failed to publish any details or provided a list of selected supplies.

Among the companies rated as $$D$$ or $$F$,$ Greenpeace named Amazon, an online retailer $($also as

an electronics manufacturer$)$ that requires significant improvement in all energy, design and

chemical criteria. Given its market size, Amazon is a large manufacturer of Kindle e$-$readers,

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