Global concern about the mountains of e-waste generated every year has been rising for quite some time – and with good reason: In 2014, the United Nations estimated that humans produced 41.8 million metric tons of electronic waste. That’s 92 billion pounds – and even though IT products made up just 7 percent of that waste, that still represents almost 6.5 billion pounds of waste our industry generated in a single year.
There are no easy solutions to the many enmeshed challenges of e-waste, but by designing for reuse, repair, refurbishing and recycling, we can make real progress.
Understand end-of-life
For all the concern about user experience in design, there is one aspect of product design that gets ignored entirely too often by others – one that has major impacts on the business, the environment, and people around the world: end-of-life design.
Designing for a second life requires a deep understanding of the downstream processes for handling electronics. One way to enable this is to open up dialogue between designers and recyclers. These experiences and conversations with recyclers get the designers thinking about beautiful products that are also optimized for repair, refurbishment, and recycling.
Big and small changes can make refurbishing and recycling significantly easier. For instance, on a recent field trip our engineers learned that having laptop cases open from the top instead of the bottom greatly extends the time it takes to dismantle. Using snap fits vs. glues and adhesives help minimize processing time. And designing instruction manuals with icons, pictures, and videos rather than text allows recyclers to work and repair at the same time instead of pausing to read detailed instructions.
For Man Tak Ho, one of Dell’s Mechanical Senior Engineers, the field trips really help extend the life of the product: “Not only do we need to be making it easy to disassemble, but it needs to be easy to repair.”
Think Modular
Modular thinking is another way to address e-waste. One example that we’ve employed with our commercial notebooks is creating a single access door for all major components, which makes it easier for users to repair by themselves versus requiring a user guide and trained technician.
Fairphone, a Dutch cell phone maker, does a great job of incorporating modular thinking into their design while also addressing human rights challenges associated with extracting raw materials.
Their latest model, the Fairphone 2, is “a smartphone dedicated to creating positive social change.” The company sources fair-trade metals and works to improve mining supply chains in Africa and elsewhere. The phone’s innovative modular design makes upgrading and repairing a simple plug-and-play operation.
To read the full story, visit http://www.triplepundit.com/podium/smart-design-can-solve-e-waste-challenge/.