|
|
 |
Articles - Publication Date 3.1.2002
Beyond The Grave
New regulations and concerns for the environment are prompting manufacturers to design products for easier recycling and remanufacturing.
By Doug Bartholomew
In the old days, a manufacturer made a product and shipped it to the distributor, who then passed it on to a retailer, who sold it. Whether the product was a piece of furniture, a car or a computer, the "ka-ching" of the cash register pretty much meant the end of the manufacturer's responsibility, except for returns, warranty service, repairs or product liability.
No more. Manufacturers, forced by new laws from Europe to California, are rethinking their responsibility for their products once they are worn out. Many manufacturers are taking positive steps to ensure that their products can be either recycled, remanufactured or returned to the earth safely when they have exhausted their useful life -- a concept known as design for the environment (DFE).
General Motors Corp. (GM), Detroit, which has had an ongoing DFE program for more than a decade, is trying to increase the percentage of materials in autos that can be recycled. Others, such as Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP), San Jose, have set examples for their industries. HP not only recycles its products, but also personal computers built by other manufacturers. Xerox Corp. reuses portions of old machines to build new ones. For all of these companies, the efforts bring both an economic payoff and an environmental one.
Right now, it's the environmental one that's most pressing. Germany is requiring electronics manufacturers to assume responsibility for "taking back" their products once they are used up or obsolete. In California, PCs can no longer be legally dumped in landfills; instead, they must be turned over to an electronics recycler. What's more, Germany is requiring automobile manufacturers to boost the content of vehicles sold there to 85% recyclability.
Some manufacturers believe it's only a matter of time before their industries are required to achieve a certain level of materials reuse or provide earth-friendly disposal methods for products.
"We've got to get into the business of taking care of the full life cycle of the product," says David Boyd, CEO of Hewitt-Rand Co., a maker of personal computers. "We've got a lot of junk out there." Boyd says that by 2004, more than 300 million personal computers will be obsolete, representing some 3 billion pounds of trash.
"The key is recycling the content," says Bill Heenan, president of the Steel Recycling Institute, a trade group in Pittsburgh. "What design for the environment says is, let the designers think about the environment and put these ideas into new products."
'Clean' Computing?
The computer industry likes to call itself a "clean" industry, but in reality high-tech overall has a relatively poor track record when it comes to designing products for the environment. Until recently, for instance, personal computers had few ready takers -- other than landfills -- for their disposal when they became obsolete.
Lately, though, a few companies, such as HP and IBM, have taken the lead in major nationwide PC recycling programs. Generally, though, the computer industry has been slow to promote take-back programs or recycling efforts for the millions of pounds of waste it generates annually.
"With the rapid turnover of computers, there is a much shorter useful life cycle of the product," says Craig Vogel, industrial design professor at the Carnegie-Mellon School of Design in Pittsburgh and co-author with Jonathan Cagan of the book, "Creating Breakthrough Products" (2002, Prentice Hall). "This industry is making garbage faster than they know what to do with."
According to one estimate, the 315 million old PCs ready to be junked by 2004, if piled together, would create a mile-high mountain of high-tech waste with the girth of a football field. What's more, that mountain would contain an estimated 1 billion pounds of lead and untold quantities of mercury, cadmium and PVC.
"We think that computer companies need to hear from consumers about the desire and need for cleaner product design<
|
|
"The product has to be easy to recycle, and that takes a lot of coordination between engineers and designers."
Craig Vogel, professor, Carnegie-Mellon School of Design
|
|