The recycle and repair are becoming a must, but a real design culture for recycling and for the repair still seems so far away from being adopted globally by industry as a required strategy, or simply as product design innovation. The report by Frida Doveil from Going Green in Vienna.
“Going Green-Care Innovation 2014”, a full immersion conference of three days in Vienna, told us all about how, when and where electronics industry can become more and more green.
340 participants from all other the world, more than 60% from international industries (amongst others, Dell, Hewlett Packard, Lenovo, Microsoft, Philips, Siemens, Sony) all presenting specific results of research and recent experimentations.
The good news is that much is being done in the field of legislation (regarding eco labels and EPEAT or WEEE standardization) and policy and the academies are working all around the world to demonstrate the advantages and opportunities of green strategies via PhD programs getting feedback from end-users.
Everything in an industry, that of electronics, which, today, is the largest global producer of waste, because of the faster and faster exchange of models as well as the abandonment, by consumers, of devices still operating perfectly.
The bad one is that a design to facilitate a longer life for electronics is still hidden.
Many things are going to be done, from the attention to materials and components to facilitate recycle, to the improvement of a Product Lifecycle Management enabling sustainable product design for tomorrow.
But a real green design for electronics, driven by the biggest companies in the market, unfortunately, does not exist yet.
Text by Frida Doveil.
Architect and partner at Fragile, corporate identity and design studio in Milan, Frida Doveil is an expert since 1986 in product innovation with particular reference to new materials and sustainable processes. She is carrying out a research about how repairability could improve design quality at an international. The research, started in 2012, is supported by ADI, for which she has recently curated three public Conversations on Design and Repairability, during the last Compasso D’oro exhibition. twitter: @fridadoveil
Captions:
Philips Lighting, lampSlimStyle LED (available in Europe by 2015).
One of the key-quote in Vienna was “ shredding before selling”: for Philips Lighting a lamp re-design can optimize post-consumer recycle upon improving better performances.
Philips SlimStyle LED: the sandwich construction assures separation upon crushing; it will be available in Europe by 2015.
Some slides from Vienna.