The environmental impact of electronics and its incorporation into the curriculum

Abstract

With the continuing ubiquitous use of electronic equipment and the boom in consumer electronic products, there comes a significant environmental impact, via the sources of materials and manufacturing processes and in the place of use and disposal. There is growing international market pressure on industry to act to ameliorate these impacts by good design and sensible policies. An overview of the impacts is given along with a review of several tools which can be used by industry to assess the impacts. In the light of the situation described above, an argument is presented that more work in this area should be done in educating undergraduate engineers and technologists and that the software tools now available are adequate, appropriate and suitable to the engineering approach to such matters. With relatively little effort on the part of academics, it is possible to teach some form of assessment of environmental impact in a way which is both realistic and meaningful to students. Some detail of the author’s experiences in teaching such matters is given