EDN EUROPE
April 10, 1997

Designing for destruction

Brian Kerridge, Editor

In the future, you'll have to adopt a design mentality in which you'll have equal responsibility for your design's creation and destruction.

If you're like me, the bottom drawer of your desk is full of outdated, faulty, and "beyond-re-pair" electronics products. I toss all sorts of discarded bits of electronics in that drawer, not because I believe I'll ever need or make use of them again, but, rather, because my conscience simply won't let me commit electronics stuff to a landfill site. All over Europe, there's no easy route for industry (or for the general public) to safely or sensibly dispose of electronics products--at least for the time being.

Yes, organisations such as the Industry Council for Electronics Equipment Recycling (ICER) in the UK are studying the problems; and, yes, eventually the EU will bring forth European Directives to force us to behave responsibly, but their net effect on my bottom drawer remains several years away.

Germany's recent framework legislation on general waste offers a first glimpse of what sort of electronic-waste-stream systems will prevail. The legislation outlines regulations for recovery and recycling of, initially, IT equipment, white goods, and consumer electronics. The regulations adopt the clear principle of "producer responsibility," which requires you to take back and either reuse or recycle the products you were responsible for designing and producing. Your company will bear the costs of this work, although distributors and end-users will, of course, eventually pay their share. Although an industry infrastructure to collect, store, and process all this electronic take-back has yet to develop, there's little doubt that is the direction we'll all follow. The only question is when--and that depends on legislation to spur us on.

When take-back arrives, the cost of product disposal will become an additional measure of the success of your design. Disposal cost will depend on how easily your product opens up, how easily component parts separate, and how easy basic materials are to dispose of or recover. Identifying exactly what materials are in your product will be an additional useful aid to cost-effective disposal.

Take-back has clear implications on the work of most product designers, and, in the future, you'll have to adopt a life-cycle design mentality in which you'll have equal responsibility for your design's creation and destruction. We thrive in an industry that has traditionally output a massive stockpile of waste products--and relentlessly continues to output more. For designers to contribute to the orderly disposal of that increasing stockpile seems entirely just.

Incidentally, I'm not expecting anyone to take back the products in my bottom drawer, but I am hoping to slip them quietly into the priority waste stream that a take-back system will create.

Brian Kerridge, Editor Let me know what you think. Send me your comments via fax at +44 1508 528430, via the Internet at ednkerridge@mcimail.com, or at 101740.1545@compuserve.com

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