Ecodesign, Design for Reuse

Abstract

Ecodesign requires rules, strategies and especially a design strategy. The target will be to create a product with a minimized environmental impact. In addition, legal requirements have to be considered. Last but not least reuse will only be successful in bigger volumes if the product planner also covers future product generation.

Key Points, Exercises, Recommended Further Reading, References/Websites

1.1 (Rules, 1) Key Points

• Ecodesign rules especially for E&E products are meanwhile standardized in different standards and European directives.

• For capital goods many companies apply reuse. Reuse is not so common for consumer products although many reuse projects are promoted now, for instance from the European Commission.

• Rules for reuse are part of ecodesign rules! Nevertheless special rules have to be applied for better reusability, such as for better disassembly if a company will concentrate on this special subject.

• Also a design for remanufacturing will require sometimes different rules than are generally recommended for ecodesign.

Strategies, company, product and design specifics are required to convince the public to reuse, to structure the product and place it in the market, and for the special design of the product.

• The influences of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) are additionally part of every environmentally compatible design. Also here reuse gets advantages because the products might be cheaper and more accessible for many people and applications.

1.1.1 (Design for Reuse, 1.2)

• For reuse, simplification of the product structure is necessary, material structure must be simplified to produce as few materials as possible, resource efficiency must be planned, more standardization has to be achieved areas such as parts, materials or platforms for a less complex development and easy reuse.

• The role of SW is important for HW components which use SW. For refurbishment it is required to achieve the quality level of a new component, or to combine new and legacy SW systems or to reduce energy consumption of the total product, as well as using greener IT or by controlling the energy consumption during stand-by or off-mode.

• A repository of tested, also reused SW, might be helpful. Also rules in development of products for the SW together with HW reuse can be applied, like simplified structures or few unnecessary functionalities.

1.1.2 (Strategies, 1.3)

• Strategies are required for company, product and design.

• The company wants to sell a product in a special market with a special environmental advertisement. The product can be modular and/or long living.

• The design strategy has to cover the whole life cycle. If one new material is introduced, for example a light weight stainless steel, the whole design can be changed including all processes. Also the target to achieve mono-materials leads to fewer parts and strong economic savings.

1.1.3 (Design Strategies, 1.4)

• Planning for several product generations can be managed by planning to apply those components in the next product which may stay identical, such as stainless steel parts. They may also remain very expensive at the end of life and can easily be restored, those like from X-ray tubes. Afterwards they can be resold for the same or another purpose. These requirements are better to be applied for capital goods where an exchange for repair with a customer owning an undestroyed product is easier. Also for consumer products a refurbishment is possible if the product is not too damaged.

• An alternative will be a design for upgrades where the product mainly stays the same but components or SW can be exchanged, always within the same basic product. Such a strategy is applied with the iameco PC at the highest technological level. For consumer products such a strategy should be adopted with more success as the core stays identical and upgrades or repairs could be ordered by a customer.

1.2 Exercises

• (1) Why is a design strategy important?

• (2) Develop 5 very important rules for ecodesign from Table 7.1 and compare them with the “Quick 5” from Philips.

• (1) Search the internet for companies with ecodesign rules? How many of them have rules for reuse or remanufacturing?

• (2) Search the internet for design strategies? How many different ones did you find? Can they be combined into one strategy or are there trade-offs?

• (3) Which trade-offs do you see if certain materials should be avoided? What could happen if only renewable materials should be used?

1.3 Recommended Further Reading [3, 60, 61, 71, 73]

• About ecodesign strategies: Quella, F.: Ecodesign strategies: A missing link in ecodesign. In: Lee, K.-M.; Kauffmann, J. (eds.): Handbook of sustainable engineering, Dordrecht/Netherlands, Springer, 2013, pp. 269–284. ISBN 978-1-402-08940-4

• About different rules and their application in industry: Luttrop, C, J. Lagerstedt, Ecodesign and the ten golden rules: Generic advice for merging environmental aspects into product development, J. of Cleaner Production 14 (2006) 1396–1408

• Interesting design example and sustainability aspects: www.fairphone.com..

• Examples of circular economies: Ellen MacArthur Foundation https://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/circular-economy.

1.4 References/Websites [11, 21–23, 25]

Reuse of factory equipment ReBorn: http://www.reborn-eu-project.org/

Search internet for many new examples!

1.5 (2.) Key Points

Green IT should not cause a strong impact on the environment.

• By bad programming especially too high energy consumption could result and prevent further utilization. Waste of many consumables might also be generated, for example by some printers.

• In case of HW reuse of a component, this problem cannot be continued, because it might then be better to throw the whole used product away.

• SW reuse can help to avoid problems with bad programs, if the SW reused was already checked for compatibility and quality.

• Usually a potential improvement will not be introduced for relatively cheap products. In this case the product will be developed anew and also the SW will not be reused.

• In expensive products, like those for the defense industry, aviation and others, old and new components have to cooperate because of their high value. It might be worth developing an energy saving concept.

1.6 Measurement

• Different methods are recommended to measure the energy consumption of SW, such as run-time measurement or, depending on the task, it might be data intensive, computation intensive and communication intensive.

• The following metrics are proposed to measure the quality of green SW: Energy/Unit of work, CPU cycle count, memory consumption, peripheral usage time or idle time.

• SW ecodesign becomes a new subject of research. The different SW levels of a whole system are analyzed, such as telecom equipment and its network infrastructure. So SW design strategies cover the programming levels to optimize them. Also, the role of HW has to be investigated. Tools for SW ecodesign are available but require further optimization. In addition, Green by IT is understood as assistance for HW to reduce energy consumption.

• Green by IT should be discussed together with reuse of older HW. For example by integration of a control unit in a machine. Then energy consumption of a motor or pump can be severely reduced. SW, even a reused program, can be applied to minimize the energy consumption of reusable products.

• A repository of tested green SW might be a good idea for the reuse of green SW elements.

Green and sustainable IT considerations might influence the whole product: Environmental impact, such as carbon footprint, infrastructure, usability, HW obsolescence, adaptability, functionality and many more.

1.7 Exercises

• (1) Find out where your PC and your printer at home or in the office require too much time (and consume too much energy) or produce too much waste. Identify possibilities for improvement. What can you do? Which assistance may be offered by the manufacturer of a Green IT product? Which aspects may lead to a sustainable product?

• (2) Why is the carbon footprint a quality criterion for SW?

• (3) How could a product working in a network, like a production plant, be made greener by IT? Give an example.

1.8 Recommended Further Reading

• Definitions, Measurements, and Quality Aspects: [16]

• Collection of links about green IT: www.greencomputingportal.de, www.ecologee.de/links.

• The article [71] deals with SW ecodesign and gives some recommendations for computing.

• Description of tools for identification of too high energy consumption caused by servers: http://www.spec.org/sert/.

1.9 References/Websites [12–16, 20, 27–31, 71]

Server efficiency rating tool: (SERT) by Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation, http://www.spec.org/sert/.