Case Study on the eco-design of green electronic products - photocopiers

Abstract

In the recent years, concern over environmental pollution and the need to promote green electronic products is the prime agenda, not only for environmentalists, but also for the common citizens world-wide. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Eco-design are the two key solutions devised to enhance the green-worthiness of electronic products in an environmental friendly-way. To design and develop electronic products based on Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Eco-design strategies, more empirical research have to be conducted. Also, the presence of different Eco-design tools, such as Simapro 7, Eco-it/Edit, Eco-design Pilot, drives the necessity to compare and evaluate their performance. In this report, a LCA of a photocopier is conducted, the copier model investigated is majorly MF6550, by the way of data gathering of different key variable associated with the product (e.g. BOM, Materials percentage etc.). The Life Cycle of photo-copier which is designed by empirical analysis of data in the previous steps using SimaPro, is used to analyze the environmental impact of photocopier. The primary goal of this study is to have an environmental assessment to the photocopier taking the whole product life into account. Also, the final cumulative environmental loads associated with a photocopier in its product life are to be calculated. Moreover, it is proved that remanufacturing of photocopier can help to lower the environment load. Some manufacturing guidelines of manufacturing a photo-copier and energy saving modes are suggested in this report. By the result of ECO-design PILOT, photocopier is a use intensive product.