Greening The Product Life Cycle

Time was when the life cycle of a product consisted of completely disconnected phases. It was designed, manufactured, shipped, sold, used, and discarded with little or no connection between these activities. That era is coming to an end. We’re entering a new era where every life cycle activity will be coordinated and, in many cases, optimized for least impact on the environment.

Remember the mantra of agricultural America? It went “use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without.” That philosophy stands in stark contrast to industrial America where planned obsolescence and disposable everything was in vogue. But as we enter what might be called the age of environmental concern, we may well return to those rural values of century ago.

The beating we’ve given Mother Earth is starting to come back on us. There are real safety issues associated with our food and water. We’re running out of acceptable places to throw our trash. Oh, and have you noticed that sea ice is melting, oceans are rising, and even local climates are going a little weird?

Even if global warming wasn’t coming to cook us or that the price of oil is going to make our eyes bug out as soon as the economy picks up again, it would still make sense to address the way we make, use and dispose of products before we wind up poisoning ourselves.

First and foremost, we’ve got to stop making stuff that tries to kill us. That includes anything that runs on hydrocarbon fuels. As it turns out, most of what we make will try to kill us if we make large enough quantities. For instance, consider the humble cell phone. They may seem benign, but when you throw them in the trash bad things start to happen. There are all sorts of toxic chemicals, such as cadmium and arsenic, that leach out as they decompose in the landfill.

There are a couple of ways to avoid this problem. In the short term we can send cell phones and other electronic gadgets to a recycler instead of tossing them in the trash. That way the materials will be kept out of the waste stream and used in future manufacturing. A longer term solution is to identify troublesome materials and substitute others that aren’t toxic or much less so. One example is the solder that fastens components to circuit boards. It used to be full of lead. Now more and more circuit boards are being made with lead-free solder alloys. CRTs are also full of lead. But flat screen displays aren’t.

Material selection is critical to making environmentally safe products, but the manufacturing process is also important. A key element is the amount of energy used to create a device and where that energy comes from. The degree of future climate change that is caused by manufacturing one more item today can be cut dramatically by using green energy in the manufacturing process and using materials that have been recycled, especially metals such as copper, gold and steel. Getting new metals from ore costs much more in energy terms that simply re-melting and purifying already refined metal.

Product design itself is a major influence on how much damage a product will do over its lifetime. Circuits designed to minimize power draw mean less demand for power stations. Products designed for easy disassembly and recycling save energy downstream when they’re useful life is over. The fact is that most things we use are not heirlooms. We’re likely going to buy and replace a dozen or more personal computers in our lifetimes. The old ones have to go somewhere. Apple Computer is particularly sensitive to this issue and offers to pay for the return and recycling of your old computer when you buy a new one. Perhaps the day will come when all products are treated this way.

It’s easy to see now that the energy that a product draws from the grid while operating is just a fraction of the energy involved in its life cycle. So, too, the materials used to create one product can come from the remains of a previous item and live on as they are recycled to build the next model. The incremental cost of transforming products to incorporate technology innovations is far less than the cost of starting from scratch with raw materials each time.

Better life cycle planning for all the products we use has the potential to dramatically reduce our need for new energy sources as it simultaneously saves us from chemically polluting our environment. All of this without having to sacrifice the progress we’ve come to enjoy.

Would You Eat This Cell Phone?

We know that electronic equipment has recently been fingered as a major source of toxic waste. So much so that communities have started recycling programs to collect old TVs, computers, VCRs and smaller electronic devices. You can send in your old cell phones to online recyclers who will even pay you for recent models. But the real solution may be to clean up the problem upstream.

We love our electronics. Fat chance that we'll ever go back to a pre-technology world. Who really wants to trade their PC and Blackberry for a horse and plow? You can get tired just thinking about it. But we really do need to face the fact that those billions of plastic cases and circuit boards are going to poison us right off the planet if we just keep tossing them when a newer better model comes out.

Recycling is certainly a good way to start addressing the problem. Making things that aren't so toxic in the first place is even better. A few years ago, Motorola came up with polyvinylalcohol polymer that can be used as a plastic cell phone case. Researchers at the University of Warwick in Coventry, England then devised a front cover embedded with a sunflower seed. No, you don't get a vine growing into your ear even if you talk all day. But when that cover is planted in the garden, the seed extracts fertilizer from the plastic and... upsy-daisy. Well, upsy-sunflower.

Now Sony Ericsson is out to see what it can do to save the planet. Their concept is called GreenHeart. They start with disposable bio-plastic housings but go on to use recycled plastic keypads, electronic manuals, environmentally conscious packaging, and a charger with a very low standby power.

That's another bugaboo with electronic equipment. It looks off, but it's really on. The standby power ranges from a few watts to dozens of watts, each device sipping off the power grid like a tiny vampire. Add them all up and you need to build more generating stations just to power stuff that isn't being used. Even cell phone chargers draw some power while you're off using the phone. That is, if you don't unplug them when you're done charging. And who remembers to do that?

Perhaps one answer to our world's growing need for both food and technology is to make equipment not just degradable, but actually digestible. You've seen the ad on TV where people eat five dollars. Well, why not five cell phones? If electronic chips went well with salsa, you'd have a hard time not devouring the TV before the game was over. On second thought, perhaps we better just stick with biodegradable materials in the future and recycling for now. I really don't want a monitor that might be mistaken for a pizza.

Recycle Your Old iPhone For Cash

Early adopters and power users are just under a month away from getting the new iPhone 3G. The addition of faster cellular data networking, nearly as zippy as the WiFi hotspot experience, plus true GPS, corporate email & third-party application support makes it a definite improvement over the initial iPhone release. So much so that anyone who desperately needs the upgraded functionality or just wants to ride on the cutting edge will find it almost impossible not to trade up. But, oh, the cost. What can you do to take some of the sting out of buying the iPhone you wanted all along, when you've already spent a small fortune on the earlier model?

The latest information I've found about upgrading to the 3G iPhone is that AT&T plans to offer you a trade-in if you bought your iPhone on or after May 27 and it is in like new condition. According to one report, you'll get your money back less a 10% restocking fee when you buy and activate a new 3G iPhone. Sounds like a pretty good deal if you go in to an AT&T store between July 11 and August 1 and haven't lost your original packaging or receipt, or scratched the phone.

But what if you are a true early adopter who stood in line to get one of the first iPhones and would gladly do the same again. You can certainly do that and buy yourself a 3G model. But you won't get a trade-in deal. So, now what do you do? Put it in a glass display case to admire? Toss it in a drawer like the fate of most unneeded cell phones? Try to sell it in a newspaper ad or auction it on eBay?

Here's another option. Recycle your iPhone for cash.

Now, just a second. Who wants to send a beauty like the iPhone to the recycling crusher? Relax. That iPhone is still worth decent money to a company that recycles newer technology phones for use overseas. How much money? I just checked the prices paid and, as of this writing, your 16 GB iPhone will get you $280. The 4 GB and 8 GB models will net you $100. You get a free postage paid mailer, send in your unwanted phone and charger, and you get check back in the mail.

You almost always get more if you sell your old unwanted cell phones as soon as you take them out of service. A cell phone gets stale faster than a carton of milk. But that doesn't mean that those dusty old cells aren't worth recycling. In the first two years, you can probably get paid something for just about any model phone. The higher tech smartphones bring more than the garden variety entry-level phones as you would expect.

The real oldies that were once goodies may not have a cash value anymore, but you can still send them in at no cost. Why do that? Mobile electronic devices contain goodly amounts of toxic chemicals used in their manufacture. Lead, cadmium and arsenic are just a few. Tossing one or two in the landfill won't create a public health hazard, but pitching tens or hundreds of millions of them is a real threat. Those minor amounts of toxic waste combine to degrade the environment for future generations.

Instead of just pitching that old junker phone, send it to the recycler and know that it will be dismantled and the materials recovered for reuse or proper disposal. It gets the clutter out of your house or business and you're doing a good thing.

You're intrigued by the thought of getting money for that stack of retired cell phones that your family or employees have accumulated, aren't you? Well, find out now how much your old wireless device is worth and then get paid to recycle them.

Green Solution For Old Cell Phones

Are you a reluctant cell phone collector? Most people have a few models in the basement or desk drawer. They all have one thing in common. They don't work anymore.

The thing about cell phones is that they go obsolete long before they stop functioning. There's the occasional dropped or crushed mobile. But most of these phones would work just fine if you charged them up and got them a cellular service plan. Ah, there's the rub. The plans are what costs. The phones are cheap. Even new models are often offered free or at a highly subsidized low prices. Why would you keep paying monthly fees for the old clunker when you can have the latest model for the same monthly cost?

So there they sit. Piling up one, two, or three per household. Collectively there are hundreds of millions of old cell phones going unused. Eventually, people clean house. What happens then is that millions of phones go from the drawer to the curb, and then on to the city landfill.

Isn't that where junk is supposed to go? Cell phones aren't like most junk. Electronic trash is both wasteful and hazardous. What you are putting into the landfill for the next hundred or thousand years is a package of chemicals that can only be harmful to the environment in the long run. They contain chemicals such as lead, cadmium, arsenic and zinc. These materials are what makes the electronics work. There isn't a lot in each phone. But when you inject thousands or tens of thousands of phones into a landfill and they start to break down over time, you've got the potential for serious trouble some day.

So what do you do? Some communities have an electronics recycling day once or twice a year. They will take your cell phones and other unwanted electronic items and properly recycle them to recover useful chemicals. That includes the lead, cadmium, arsenic and zinc. But it also includes plastic, glass and gold.

Gold? Yes. gold plating is used on circuit boards and within semiconductors because gold is an excellent conductor of electricity and doesn't corrode the way copper and aluminum do. There's a little gold mine in each cell phone.

How would you like to mine some cellular gold of your own? No need to take a pick to your phone. All you have to do is send it in for recycling. This company sends you a prepaid mailer for your cell phone. You drop it in the mail and they take of of recycling or reuse so that nothing goes to waste. If your phone is a newer model and suitable for refurbishment and reuse in other countries or as an emergency phone, you'll even get paid.

How much can you make? That depends on how new and in-demand your old phone is. Even though you may have gotten the phone for free, it probably has value to someone else. Check to see what your old cell phone is worth.

So instead of letting old phones go to waste, why not get a check instead? Even if your old mobile is only suitable for recycling you'll at least have the satisfaction of knowing that you've protected the environment from hazardous waste and made the materials available for other uses.