Strategic CARE project

Motivation

In Europe is now a clear societal need for take-back and recycling of electronic products. “Closing the loop” would serve several (partly interlinked) goals, such as: 

• Reduction of the amount of materials and environmentally relevant substances going to landfill,
• Control of environmentally relevant substances (inorganic) or annihilation of such substances (organic),
• Recycling of components and materials so that they keep maximum value, contributing to a sustainability.

Since July 1999 SCARE is in the implementation phase and it will run until June 2004. The Austrian Society for Systems Engineering and Automation is the co-ordinator of SCARE, with total project costs of 100 million EURO.  

The closed product life cycle will consist of two main streams:

• The “traditional” product life chain (such as production, distribution and use) introducing environmental concerns in this stream is called “Eco-design”,
• Re-using and recycling products, components and materials (such as take back, re-use and recycling) – operation of this stream is called “End-of life Management”.

In order to successfully achieve the targets set out in the WEEE Directive, all involved parties have to act according to a common strategy to make it beneficial from both environmental, political, social and economical perspectives. Uncoordinated approaches to R&D and recycling strategies will lead to duplicated effort, misallocated investment and inefficient use of resources. A strategic approach involving and co-ordinating all actors in the product life cycle has a greater chance not only to meet legislative targets relating to collection, recycling, re-use, but to demonstrate practical ways of going beyond these targets:

• Energy consumption strategies relating to production and use stages of electronic products would contribute to a European wide strategy for reducing emissions of greenhouse gases and going beyond the 15 nations pact of an 8% reduction in next 10-14 years (Kyoto protocol),
• The involvement of many different parties requires broad co-ordination to initiate break-through steps. Endless loop-discussions have to be avoided,
• SMEs and supply-companies need to be well prepared for the resulting demands placed on them by large companies,
• Europe has good expertise in eco-design and end-of life management, particularly in the electronics sector. This should be supported to maintain Europe as a competitive strength versus US and Japan, which are now starting to catch-up,
• The “new” activities in the product life-cycle loop will catalyse employment and contribute to a sustainable social development.

In order to explore Ecodesign and End-of-Life management the following main issues shall be considered during further investigations:

Innovative Product/System Design

• Development of products which are fast to disassemble, enabling the re-use of components and materials
• Technical innovations to reduce the environmental impact of production and product:
• Avoidance of hazardous substances
• Reduced material weight
• Lower power consumption
• Conversion of products into services (dematerialization)
• Development of new cores technologies such as solar power, grow-again materials, ...

New Production Technologies

• Investigation of specific application possibilities of materials, which have already been developed in co-operation with the suppliers
• Development of industrial, environmentally sound production processes
• Development of processes that enable the use of industrial second raw materials in manufacturing

Use Phase (Consumer Behaviour)

• Models for product performance under different use scenarios (public, corporate)
• Optimising take back and bring back systems specific to consumer groups
• Minimising energy consumption and maximising product lifetime
• Support systems for consumer organisations and governments

End-of-life management

• Product re-use (refurbishment, second hand markets, legal and guarantee issues)
• Product Take-back (collections scenarios, sorting, logistics)
• Separation (disassembly technology and separation processes, component sorting, material identification)
• Component re-use (quality assessment, second hand market, legal and guarantee issues)
• Recycled material processing (process technology, economies of scale)

In addition, there are three horizontal core competencies, which fulfil a support function for all these main issues.

Information Management

• Information exchange between all involved players in the chain
• Logistics of product, component and material handling
• Life Cycle Analysis
• Development of an in the product integrated identification unit that enables the collection of data relevant to its subsequent re-use/recycling
• Supply Chain Management
• Re-use market

Education and training of strategy makers, designers, recyclers, ...

• Specialist education/training
• Modules within mainstream educational/training

Financial & Economical aspects

• Life Cycle costing
• Eco-efficiency
• Monitoring legal developments