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1.
Product takeback calls for sound strategies of product recovery management One such strategy-is the reuse of the components of a product. There are consumer products such as power tools whose most expensive component, the electric motor; offers potential for reuse. Empirical evidence reveals that the lifetime of a motor often exceeds the life-time of the product using it. This article focuses on the reuse of electric motors. For this purpose, a novel circuit was developed that measures, computes, and records parameters strongly correlated with the degradation of a motor during the use stage of the product. This circuit, called electronic data log (EDL), provides valuable insights into the usage patterns of products. The data recorded during the use stage are retrieved after product takeback as a basis for reuse decisions. In this article, the trade-off between higher initial manufacturing cost caused by the EDL and cost savings from the reuse of used motors is analyzed. The problem of misclassifications of used motors is also addressed. It is shown that the return rate of used products is the critical parameter determining the economic efficiency of a motorreuse strategy based on EDLs. The analysis shows that the implementation of EDLs in products as an enabler for motor reuse may be associated with large cost savings 相似文献
2.
Background Aims, and Scope. As products are, directly and indirectly, main sources for ecological impact, the overall enhancement of products' ecological behaviour is an important contribution to the protection of the Earth's biosphere. This is especially important in a world where the major economical system is based on a constant rise in industrial production, consumption, and disposal of products. The true ecological performance of a product can only be determined by consideration of the impact arising from the entire lifecycle, and by including all known impacts into the assessments. The state of technology provides a standardized framework for such life cycle assessments (LCA) in the ISO 14040 series (see ISO 1997), and numerous databases and software tools are available to support the conduction of LCA. To integrate ecological indicators into decisions of everyday product development, as natural as it is the case today with finite items, design, and costs, indicators based on a consideration of the product's entire life have to be generated with little effort and in short time. Methods This article describes the fundamental principles of a technology designed to integrate lifecycle information into common 3-dimensional product models, like the ones used within modern Computer Aided Design (CAD) systems. Thereby, ecological assessments can be effectively undertaken during product development, where most of the environmental lock-in of a product is defined (see Lewis et al. 2001). Overall effects of alterations in materials or other product properties can be assessed instantly, supporting on the spot decisions to reach an improved product design. Results Next to an information model that manages the product and process representation, the research on which this article is based also deals with the calculation of resulting indicators, database access to ecological indicators, a graphical user interface, and a synchronisation tool for the CAD system Pro/Engineer . The developed concepts have been implemented as a prototype software and validated in different stages. Conclusions The concepts described in this article are a foundation for tools that integrate ecological assessments into everyday product development, on the basis of 3-dimensional CAD systems. Reuse of existing CAD data, an improved understanding of the assessment structure by product developers, and an automated calculation of resulting indicators are approaches to largely enhance the efficiency of product-related ecological assessments. 相似文献
3.
Satish Joshi 《Journal of Industrial Ecology》1999,3(2-3):95-120
Life-cycle assessment (LCA) facilitates a systems view in environmental evaluation of products, materials, and processes. Life-cycle assessment attempts to quantify environmental burdens over the entire life-cycle of a product from raw material extraction, manufacturing, and use to ultimate disposal. However, current methods for LCA suffer from problems of subjective boundary definition, inflexibility, high cost, data confidentiality, and aggregation.
This paper proposes alternative models to conduct quick, cost effective, and yet comprehensive life-cycle assessments. The core of the analytical model consists of the 498 sector economic input-output tables for the U.S. economy augmented with various sector-level environmental impact vectors. The environmental impacts covered include global warming, acidification, energy use, non-renewable ores consumption, eutrophication, conventional pollutant emissions and toxic releases to the environment. Alternative models are proposed for environmental assessment of individual products, processes, and life-cycle stages by selective disaggregation of aggregate input-output data or by creation of hypothetical new commodity sectors. To demonstrate the method, a case study comparing the life-cycle environmental performance of steel and plastic automobile fuel tank systems is presented. 相似文献
This paper proposes alternative models to conduct quick, cost effective, and yet comprehensive life-cycle assessments. The core of the analytical model consists of the 498 sector economic input-output tables for the U.S. economy augmented with various sector-level environmental impact vectors. The environmental impacts covered include global warming, acidification, energy use, non-renewable ores consumption, eutrophication, conventional pollutant emissions and toxic releases to the environment. Alternative models are proposed for environmental assessment of individual products, processes, and life-cycle stages by selective disaggregation of aggregate input-output data or by creation of hypothetical new commodity sectors. To demonstrate the method, a case study comparing the life-cycle environmental performance of steel and plastic automobile fuel tank systems is presented. 相似文献
4.
Byung-Chul Choi Hang-Sik Shin Su-Yol Lee Tak Hur 《The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment》2006,11(2):122-128
Background, Aims and Scope Telecommunication and information technology, dramatically emerged during the last decade, has generated environmental problems
by accelerating mass production, mass consumption, and mass disposal of personal computers (PCs) in Korea. In addition, it
has led the Korean new economy. The Korean government has encouraged researchers and industry to study the environmental impact,
adequate disposal treatment, and the reasonable recycling rate of an end-of-life personal computer. The main purpose of this
research is to investigate the life cycle environmental impact of PCs and to determine the desirable or feasible recycle rate
of an end-of-life PC. An LCA on a PC was performed based on different recycling scenario. Target audiences are new product
developers, designers, product recovery managers and environmental policy makers who are interested in the environmental impact
of PCs and recycling of end-of-life products.
Methods A target product is a Pentium IV personal computer made in Korea in 2001, excluding the monitor and peripheral equipment.
The procedure of the LCA followed the ISO14040 series. System boundary includes the entire life cycle of the product, including
pre-manufacturing (the electrical parts and components manufacturing), manufacturing, transportation, use, and disposal. The
LCI and impact assessment database for a PC was constructed using SIMAPRO version 4.0 software and LCI information was compiled
by site-specific data and the Korean national database. The LCA was performed on different recycling scenarios: one being
that of the current recycling rate of 46%, and the other being the ideal condition of a 100% recycling rate.
Results and Discussion Abiotic depletion, global warming, ecotoxicity, human toxicity, acidification, ozone layer depletion, photo-oxidant formation,
and eutrophication are adopted as the impact categories. The pre-manufacturing stage was a significant stage for all of the
environmental parameters, besides human toxicity potential. PC manufacturing consists of rather simple processes such as assembly
and packaging. For improving the environmental performance of PCs, environmental management approaches of design for the environment
and green procurement are recommended. The use stage had a significant potential due to the electricity consumption produced
by burning fossil fuel. The disposal stage's contribution to environmental impact was largest in human toxicity, and second
largest in ozone layer depletion potential. The PC recycling was shown to inhibit all environmental impacts with the exception
of the ozone depletion and ecotoxicity potential. The increase of light oil, nitric acid, sulfuric acid, and deoxidating agent
consumption during the recycling process contributes to the environmental impact of ozone and ecotoxicity parameters. Current
recovery and recycling technologies should be taken into account for enhancing the benefits of recycling. Anyway, the effectiveness
of recycling was highlighted by this study. PC recycling reduces the total environmental impact of the product. The PC recycling
is recommended to be raised up to at least 63% in order to reduce the environmental burdens of a PC in other life cycle stages.
Conclusion and Recommendation This study implies that design for the environment (DfE) in the product design stage and green procurement are recommended
for improving the entire environmental performance of electronic equipment such as PCs. The recycling of waste PCs clearly
reduces the environmental burden. There are, however, trade-offs among environmental parameters according to the PC recycling
rate. Current recycling methods are not effective in reducing ozone depletion and ecotoxicity environmental impact. The product
recovery is another key for efficient recycling. Efficient reverse logistics to collect and transport end-of-life PCs should
be taken into account to enhance recycling effects. There were several electrical parts not included in this assessment, due
to the unavailability of adequate data. Further studies with more detail and reliable inventories for electrical parts and
sub-components are recommended. Furthermore, costs of recycling should also be treated in further research. 相似文献
5.
Jaewon Lee Hye-jin Cho Bokmoon Choi Joonyong Sung Sungyoung Lee Minjong Shin 《The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment》2000,5(4):205-208
This study was intended to evaluate the environmental impact, and potential improvements for a typical tractor model (LT360D) of LG Machinery Co., Ltd. The life cycle of this study includes all stages from raw material acquisition up to final disposal. The eco-indicator 95 method was employed to perform an impact assessment. The result of this study is expected to represent the environmental feature of typical diesel vehicles at each life cycle stage. This study is a starting point of building life cycle inventories for typical off-road diesel tractors. With this result, environmental weak points of the tractor have been defined, and major improvement strategies have been set up to develop the ‘Green Tractor’. 相似文献
6.
《Journal of Industrial Ecology》2002,6(3-4):103-123
Our article uses a new institutional economics (NIE) framework to explore the role of voluntary industry standards in the development and implementation of environmental supplier-management programs in the computer industry. We examine two different voluntary standards, one for the management of design for environment (DfE) in the semiconductor fabrication equipment sector and the other for assessing the implementation and use of environmental management systems throughout the computer industry supply chain. We compare and contrast the two standards to explain why the former was widely adopted and has helped integrate DfE into buyer-supplier relations among adopters, whereas the latter failed to gain acceptance. In line with NIE logic, both standards aimed to lower transaction and customization costs by setting "rules of the game" for interfirm transactions that would help simplify and routinize novel environmental supply-chain programs and activities. Their differential success can be elucidated in terms of how well each met the NIE criteria for remediableness and legitimacy. We conclude that voluntary standards have the potential to play an important role in promoting DfE in industrial supply chains. We further conclude that NIE provides a conceptual framework of great value to industrial ecologists who analyze how industry standards and other institutions help firms move toward more sustainable supply-chain management practices. 相似文献
7.
Christine Meisner Rosen Janet Bercovitz Sara Beckman 《Journal of Industrial Ecology》2000,4(4):83-103
Our article uses the theory of transaction cost economics as a conceptual basis for examining the contracting mechanisms by which firms in the computer industry structure programs to encourage their suppliers to improve their environmental management systems and/or the environmental quality of their products. We explore the economic transactions hazards associated with asking suppliers to invest in the specialized technologies required to improve environmental performance of products and management practices and the relational contracting mechanisms computer industry firms are using to protect themselves against these hazards. We also describe the importance the managers we interviewed attributed to various transactions hazards and their perceptions of how well their firms were coping with them. We conclude by discussing questions for future research. By using TCE to frame our analysis of how computer manufacturers are structuring their relationships with their suppliers in the environmental area, we hope to show how social science theory can be used to enrich and increase the practicality of the work done by engineers and others in the mainstream areas of the industrial ecology field. 相似文献
8.
This paper proposes a computer-based method for providing product designers with real-time environmental impact assessment. In this concurrent modeling approach, environmental experts build life-cycle models, define their interfaces, and publish them as distributed objects on the Internet. Traditional designers integrating these objects into their design models have access to the impact assessment methods provided by the environmental expert. In this paradigm, the focus shifts from providing techniques that let non-expert designers perform life-cycle impact assessments to tools that facilitate timely communication and information transfer between designers and appropriate environmental experts. Establishing real-time communication between the product design models and the environmental life-cycle models is the primary focus of this paper. Methods for establishing and maintaining the interaction between life-cycle and product design models are described. A beverage container design example illustrates how this collaborative approach can use environmental and traditional design goals to determine effective tradeoffs between design alternatives. 相似文献
9.
10.
《Journal of Industrial Ecology》2003,7(3-4):75-91
This article presents the application of life-cycle assessment in early phases of process design in the context of technology that employs a bio-based material. The goal is to identify hot spots in the process chains with regard to environmental impacts by performing a dominance analysis. By focusing his activities on the hot spots identified, the designer is given the opportunity to efficiently improve environmental performance. This approach is illustrated for the case of supercritical water gasification, a novel technology for the treatment of organic feedstock with high moisture content. In the reactor under supercritical conditions, organic components are converted into a high-caloric synthesis gas, with hydrogen, methane, and carbon dioxide as the main products. The data used for the assessment are obtained from laboratory tests and the literature, completed by assumptions for missing data. The scope of assessment ranges from the extraction of raw materials to the product, that is, hydrogen (cradle to gate) with sewage sludge of a municipal wastewater treatment plant used as feedstock. The assessment identifies the main sources of environmental impacts. The predominant process step in terms of global warming potential is the supply of the gasification process with additional heat. The production of a blending agent in the dewatering step is the main source of the impact category of acidification, whereas the wastewater treatment plant is the origin of emissions that lead to eutrophication. The revealed sources are analyzed further and options for reducing the environmental impacts are discussed. 相似文献
11.
Thomas E. Graedel 《Journal of Industrial Ecology》1999,3(2-3):85-93
The third stage of life-cycle assessment, interpretation analysis (and improvement analysis, one of its components), has received relatively modest attention from LCA developers, especially as regards approaches for effecting improvements. However, this latter step is crucial if the LCA is to produce environmental benefits. A structured approach to improvement analysis is proposed, in which it is recognized that decisions regarding the recommendations that flow from the first two LCA stages are based not only on the environmental aspects of the recommended actions but also on such factors as technical feasibility, economic benefit, implications for product management, and effects on customer perception. A prioritization technique based on these factors is developed, as are two prioritization diagrams, one segmented by action agent and one segmented by life stage. 相似文献
12.
As of 1 January 2006 all automotive OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) and component manufacturers operating within the European Union will need to comply with the End-of-Life Vehicle Directive (referred to hereafter as the EU ELV Directive). The EU ELV Directive compels all OEMs to take back and dismantle all motor vehicles for domestic use at the end of their useful lives. Each component part will then be either reused or recycled. To this end, the ultimate goal of the EU ELV Directive is that all motor vehicles for domestic use will have a reuse or recyclable content of 85% at the end of their useful lives, moving toward 95% by 2015. The burden of the EU ELV Directive falls on both the OEMs and their component manufacturers, forcing them to innovate and \"design for disassembly.\" This being the case, it offers a unique real world example with which to test the Porter Hypothesis. Porter asserts that strict, correctly formulated environmental regulation can offer a firm secondary benefits through improved product design and the reduction of waste. This in turn allows the firm to offset the cost of compliance. Because the EU ELV Directive has been fashioned to force firms into a process of innovation and redesign, the magnitude of these so-called offsets can be judged. This article employs Rugman and Verbeke's 1998 strategic matrix of firm response to environmental regulation to examine qualitative details of the strategic response of automotive component manufacturers and OEMs in the United Kingdom to the demands of the directive to judge the volume of offsets generated. This analysis shows no support for the Porter Hypothesis and challenges the assumptions of Rugman and Verbeke's model. 相似文献
13.
Ceri Fenwick Kieren Mayers Jacquetta Lee Richard Murphy 《Journal of Industrial Ecology》2023,27(5):1370-1388
This paper presents five case studies on waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) recycling to provide a coherent overview on the likely impact of eco-design measures on recycling of plastics used in energy-related products within the EU. Whilst some eco-design measures, such as improving disassembly of plastic parts, may generally benefit recycling operations, other measures were found to be ineffective or requiring further investigation. For example, product polymer marking, and provision of product-specific information was rarely utilized by participant organizations, if at all. Additionally, this study highlights a disconnect between the aims of substance bans as an eco-design measure and the impact upon plastics recycling in practice. Future research could help with quantitative and/or statistical analysis of WEEE processing to investigate across a wider selection of recyclers and recycling processes. Despite 20 years of research on eco-design, it appears that EU eco-design policies and voluntary initiatives are still being devised without adequate understanding of their impact on different types of recycling practices. Empirical research on recycling processes can provide important insight to ensure eco-design measures are effective and avoid unintended consequences for the environment. 相似文献
14.
This article presents a generic method to assist product and process designers in measuring resource use and environmental discharges based on the relationships between process flow inputs and outputs and their activity levels. It combines activity-based costing from conventional accounting with life-cycle inventories. The method is demonstrated on four electronic assembly product and process designs. The demonstration exhibits the disaggregation and allocation of costs and effluents from various manufacturing operations. This activity-based environmental allocation approach may be integrated with inventory analysis-the first step in full and streamlined life-cycle assessments, design for environment evaluation methods, environmental management activities, and new production planning models that consider environmental impacts. 相似文献
15.
Product design-for-environment (DfE) has traditionally relied on life-cycle assessment (LCA) as a primary means of assessing environmental performance. To date, LCA has focused on static inventory and impacts of material streams during the stages of resource extraction, component manufacture, product use, and end of life at a high level of aggregation. Improvement analysis, though theoretically an important stage of LCA, is practically very challenging to implement using LCA alone. One reason for this is that the focus on detailed characterization of material streams does not facilitate a development of an understanding of the mechanistic relationship between design intent and material, manufacturing, and use-phase potential impacts. As the product development community transitions from sequential design to more streamlined concurrent design, interactive design tools are needed as a supplement to assessment tools in order to facilitate tradeoffs among environmental and other factors. This article presents an environmental analysis approach based on detailed process modeling which evaluates components from a functional design point of view. From a manufacturer's perspective, local potential effects in aggregate are often as important as global potential impacts. Furthermore, impacts often relate to explicit trade-offs between different life-cycle stages, such as production and use. In this article, the influence of functional design and manufacturing specifications (surface tolerance and finish) on localized potential impacts is illustrated through two different mechanical component (steel roller bearing and rotating shaft) case studies. Detailed analytical tools are key in enabling optimization and trade-offs by designers and process planners. The functional modeling approach is an important complement to LCA in providing a well-defined view of environmental performance. 相似文献
16.
Ruby Pineda‐Henson Alvin B. Culaba Guillermo A. Mendoza 《Journal of Industrial Ecology》2002,6(1):15-28
This article addresses the need for a structured and compre-hensive methodology for assessing the environmental perfor-mance of manufacturing processes. The analytic hierarchy pro-cess (AHP) is used as the basic framework for analyzing environmental impacts and improvement options following a streamlined life-cycle assessment (LCA) approach that is fo-cused on the manufacturing operation. The multicriteria de-cision analysis approach of the AHP is consistent with the LCA concept because the environmental factors can be hierarchi-cally structured into impacts and improvement options. Its po-tential as a valuation tool for impact and improvement assess-ment addresses both qualitative and quantitative issues in environmental decision making.
Through application to a pulp and paper manufacturing case study, the viability of the AHP for evaluating environmen-tal impacts and prioritizing process improvement options rela-tive to these impacts is demonstrated. AHP was used to pro-vide a quantitative tool for the design of a set of weighting factors for impact and improvement analyses. 相似文献
Through application to a pulp and paper manufacturing case study, the viability of the AHP for evaluating environmen-tal impacts and prioritizing process improvement options rela-tive to these impacts is demonstrated. AHP was used to pro-vide a quantitative tool for the design of a set of weighting factors for impact and improvement analyses. 相似文献
17.
As design for recycling becomes more broadly applied in material and product design, analytical tools to quantify the environmental implications of design choices will become a necessity. Currently, few systematic methods exist to measure and direct the metallurgical alloy design process to create alloys that are most able to be produced from scrap. This is due, in part, to the difficulty in evaluating such a context‐dependent property as recyclability of an alloy, which will depend on the types of scraps available to producers, the compositional characteristics of those scraps, their yield, and the alloy specification itself. This article explores the use of a chance‐constrained based optimization model, similar to models used in operational planning in secondary production today, to (1) characterize the challenge of developing recycling‐friendly alloys due to the contextual sensitivity of recycling, (2) demonstrate how such models can be used to evaluate the potential scrap usage of alloys, and (3) explore the value of sensitivity analysis information to proactively identify effective alloy modifications that can drive increased potential scrap use. These objectives are demonstrated through two cases that involve the production of a broad range of alloys utilizing representative scraps from three classes of industrial end uses. 相似文献
18.
Atalay Atasu 《Journal of Industrial Ecology》2019,23(4):744-750
We revisit three important assumptions about extended producer responsibility (EPR) that originate from academia, policy, or practice: (1) A central objective of EPR should be to induce product designs for the environment; (2) collective EPR implementations mute incentives to design for the environment; and (3) more stringent EPR policy parameters will generate better environmental outcomes. We discuss the potential shortcomings of these assumptions from an operations perspective and their implications for academic and policy research. 相似文献
19.
In the late 1990s, office furniture manufacturer Herman Miller, Inc., entered into a collaboration with architect William McDonough to create a system for designing cradle-to-cradle products. This collaboration led to the creation of a tool—the Design for Environment (DfE) product assessment tool—that evaluates progress towards cradle-to-cradle products. The first product Herman Miller designed using the DfE product assessment tool was the Mirra chair. Over the course of the chair's development, the DfE process generated a number of design changes, including selecting a completely different material for the chair's spine, increasing recycled content in chair components, eliminating all PVC (polyvinyl chloride) components, and designing the chair for rapid disassembly using common tools.
The areas of greatest success in designing the Mirra chair for the environment were the increased use of recyclable parts and increased ease of disassembly, whereas the areas of greatest challenge were increasing recycled content and using materials with a green chemistry composition. The success in recyclability reflects the use of metals, materials that have a well-established recycling infrastructure. The success in disassembly reflects the high degree of control that Herman Miller has over product assembly. The challenge to increasing recycled content is the use of plastics in chairs. Unlike the metals, which all contain some recycled content, most plastics are made from virgin polymers. The challenge to improving materials chemistry is the limited range of green chemicals and materials on the market.
The Mirra chair exemplifies the value of incorporating the environment into design and the need for tools to benchmark progress, as well as the challenges of creating a truly cradle-to-cradle product. Herman Miller recognizes that working toward cradle-to-cradle products is a journey that will involve continuous improvement of its products. 相似文献
The areas of greatest success in designing the Mirra chair for the environment were the increased use of recyclable parts and increased ease of disassembly, whereas the areas of greatest challenge were increasing recycled content and using materials with a green chemistry composition. The success in recyclability reflects the use of metals, materials that have a well-established recycling infrastructure. The success in disassembly reflects the high degree of control that Herman Miller has over product assembly. The challenge to increasing recycled content is the use of plastics in chairs. Unlike the metals, which all contain some recycled content, most plastics are made from virgin polymers. The challenge to improving materials chemistry is the limited range of green chemicals and materials on the market.
The Mirra chair exemplifies the value of incorporating the environment into design and the need for tools to benchmark progress, as well as the challenges of creating a truly cradle-to-cradle product. Herman Miller recognizes that working toward cradle-to-cradle products is a journey that will involve continuous improvement of its products. 相似文献
20.
Collection and treatment of waste from electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) is regulated in the European Union by the WEEE Directive. Producers are responsible for take‐back and recycling of discarded equipment. Valuable materials are, however, at risk of “getting lost” in current processes. Thus, strategies to minimize losses are sought after. The material hygiene (MH) concept was introduced to address this issue. Structural features, which are important for the outcome of reuse, recovery, and recycling, were investigated in an earlier field study of discarded dishwashers. It was proposed that a prestep, manual removal of copper prior to shredding could increase the purity of recovered material fractions. This article builds on the field study and theoretical reasoning underlying the MH concept. Dishwashers are assumed to be designed for disassembly when the prestep is introduced. A limited life cycle assessment was performed to determine whether the proposed prestep may be environmentally beneficial in a life cycle perspective. Two alternatives were analyzed: Case 1: the current shredding process. Case 2: prestep removal of copper before shredding. Targeted disassembly prior to shredding may reduce the abiotic depletion and global warming potential in a life cycle perspective. The prestep results in increased copper recovery, but, more important, copper contamination of the recovered steel fractions is reduced. The results also highlight the importance of minimizing energy consumption in all process stages. 相似文献