Design for the Environment (or DfE) is critical in insuring proper environmental stewardship. As end-users expect better products, a great deal of the responsibility falls on the side of OEMs and companies to make their products and systems better. Whether it is PCs, tablets, smartphones, or refrigerators and TVs, even data centers and corporate networks, companies making these systems have enormous responsibility to do it right.
What are the areas they need to focus on? They are many, but here are three broad areas:
1- Design for Power Efficiency: Energy consumption is a permanent fixture in the sustainability debate. Power consumption, battery life, etc are some of the areas that consumers focus on.
2- Design for Safety: The products that we use are made of all sorts of materials, some of which are simply toxic. Think of those nasty CRTs and their glass! Design for Safety is critical for OEMs to consider, and many already do a pretty good job, others need to catch up.
3- Design for Recycling: Recycling is just a broad term used for what happens when a system is officially ‘decommissioned.’ Whether it is to harvest parts, de-manufacture, refurbish, put back into the market, and finally recycle to reuse into the commodity sector. While recyclers have managed somewhat to control the ‘recyclability’ of traditional computers, new devices entering the market, from tablets, to smartphones, etc… are creating new challenges on the recycling front because of their design.
Join us today to discuss these topics and more…
