Abstract
Life Cycle Assessments (LCA) are evolving as the most advanced method for comparing the environmental effects of products. In the complex field of electronic and microelectronic components a lot of effort has to be invested in data gathering, before serious assessments can be attempted. Today it is still not possible for an average company to include environmental optimization by LCA in the time frame for new product designs.
Simplified assessments have been proposed for this task, where speed and cost may very well precede completeness or full accuracy. These environmental models are usually not intended as replacements of the LCA idea, but rather supplement it for the first indication of environmental weak points, which could then possibly be examined by LCA methods. A very simple evaluation based on the product content and not the complete life cycle processes has been developed at the IZM specifically for use with electronics.
The goal of this paper is to give summaries and comparisons of the different approaches and how they may be used in the electronic product design.
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© 1997 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
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Nissen, N.F., Griese, H., Middendorf, A., Müller, J., Pötter, H., Reichl, H. (1997). Comparison of simplified environmental assessments versus full life cycle assessment (LCA) for the electronics designer. In: Krause, FL., Seliger, G. (eds) Life Cycle Networks. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-6381-5_25
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-6381-5_25
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
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