CRADE-TO-CRADE: TAKE-BACK FOR CLOSING THE LOOP To recycle or not to recycle?
Dr. Thomas Marinelli1, Ir. Maarten ten Houten2, and Dr. Ir. Jaco Huisman3 1
Philips Lighting, WEEE Management Team, Eindhoven, The Netherlands Philips Lighting, Sustainability Support Team, Eindhoven, The Netherlands 3 Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands 2
* Corresponding Author,
[email protected], +31 40 2755327
Abstract At Philips Electronics an EcoDesign approach has been developed and integrated in the product creation process for years. In this eco-efficiency strategy, improvements in energy consumption, use of chemical substances, product weight, packaging and recycling are balanced to determine the total environmental impact in the product entire life cycle. The authors of the “Cradle-to-Cradle” concept come forward with a concept called ecoeffectiveness for the production and consumption of goods and services. They contend it goes beyond the reduction of negative consequences implied in eco-efficiency and zero emission. In this paper the Cradle-to-Cradle and Philips EcoDesign approach will be introduced, compared on similarities and differences, and discussed.
1
Introduction
Currently the “Cradle to Cradle” concept (C2C) of Braungart and McDonough is worldwide catching attention as the next leading principle. Within Philips we adopted this concept as additional and complementary to our EcoDesign approach where several projects are running. C2C has led to increase creativity and out of the box thinking on product functionality, quality and price. It also creates a framework for communication and an incentive to a more integral approach to ecodesign in general. However, embracing this concept has also lead to discovering the limitations on applicability to electronic products as well. Examples described in the book ‘Remaking the Way We Make Things’ [1] are relative simple, like t-shirts and chairs compared to the 3000 components used in TVs and the amount of different materials. In this paper we would like to share fundamental considerations regarding the EcoDesign and the C2C concept. Thermodynamics, keeping materials in the loop and interconnections of material production & recycling flows show a different reality than has up to now been considered: biological materials are not similar to minerals or metals and both are not similar to electronic components. Is there really a technical metabolism? Product design also has fundamental challenges that are not solved by the C2C. Which as-
pect has a major contribution to the overall environmental impact of a product: energy consumption vs material load vs. toxicity?
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Cradle-to-Cradle (C2C) Approach
In their book ‘Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things’ (2002) William McDonough and Michael Braungart [1] describe a new vision on sustainable designing. In 1987 the Brundtland committee defined sustainable development as “meeting the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” [4]. The objective of the C2C vision goes beyond; fulfil our own needs and provide future generations with more possibilities: “Try to be good instead of less bad”. Eco-effectiveness and C2C design is presented as an alternative design and production concept to the strategies of zero emission and eco-efficiency [2,3]. The current eco-efficiency strategies for sustainable product development focus on decreasing the overall impact on the environment. The product is assumed to be a one-way chain from creation (design, extraction of raw materials and production), usage (consumption of energy and other consumables) to disposal (re-use and/or disposal). The ‘improvement’ of the product results from choosing cleaner raw materials (im-
proved recycled content or ‘greener’ alternative), increases the efficiency of the product (using less), minimizing the volume, velocity and toxicity of the material flow and optimizing the recyclability. McDonough and Braungart describe the core of the eco-efficiency concept as to get more from less, or more product and service value with less waste, less resource use or less toxicity. The corresponding strategies would start with an assumption of the linear, cradle-to-grave flow of material through industrial systems. This system of production and consumption inevitably transforms resources into waste “and the earth into a graveyard”. In contrast to this, the cradle-to-cradle philosophy emphasizes strategies that all used materials after the life of a product, retain their status as productive resource and can be efficiently applied in another product, divided in the biological nutrient and technical nutrients. Even the application of toxic materials could be acceptable as long as it takes place in the context of a closed system of material flows and the quality of the material is maintained (technical nutrient). McDonough and Braungart base their ecoeffectiveness and cradle-to-cradle design model on the successful interdependence and regenerative productivity of natural systems [3]. It consists of a set of strategies for generating healthy closed loop material flow metabolisms where all outputs from one process become inputs for another. The concept of waste does not exist. The example of the growth and release of thousands of cherry blossoms to create the new generation of cherry trees is used to demonstrate the overall effectiveness of a natural system. This philosophy is then extended to eco-effective industrial systems, which will be perfectly effective (without waste production) as long as materials entering industrial systems are maintained at the original status. Efficiency and effectiveness might be complementary, in case slimming down of material flows per product or service unit (eco-efficiency) is aimed for after closing the material flows (eco-effectiveness) has been achieved. To integrate cradle-to-cradle design in business processes McDonough and Braungart developed a stepwise strategy for transitioning from eco-efficiency to eco-effectiveness on the level of product design: 1. Free of … : it starts with eliminating undesirable, dangerous substances; 2. Personal preferences: make educated choices about the substances that should be included in the product;
3. The passive positive list: A systematic assessment of each ingredient (material or chemical) in a product on their toxicological and eco- toxicological characteristics leads to the creation of a passive positive list; 4. The active positive list: After the knowledge of how far each ingredient needs to be optimized (passive positive) is established, the optimization to the full degree needs to be implemented. Here each ingredient in the product is positively defined as a biological or technical nutrient; 5. Reinvention: the final step involves the relationship of the product with the customer. The concept is about the service a product provides rather than the ownership of the product and the materials it contains. Indicated benefits would include i) better control over potentially hazardous substances in products, ii) product return at the end of its useful life, iii) increased interest to produce the best possible product able to provide the service as long as possible, and iv) the producer regains valuable, high quality materials. The result would be higher quality and less expensive products. McDonough and Braungart propose fundamental shifts to eco-effective industrial systems in order to realize cradle-to-cradle metabolisms. They describe a couple of prerequisites, called: • Eco-effective nutrient management, including the effective coordination of material flows and the establishment of new forms of supportive information and finance flow networks throughout the product life cycle; • Intelligent materials pooling, where a materials bank maintains ownership of technical nutrient chemicals and materials. As explained in Figure 1 the bank leases to companies, who make products providing them to consumers in the form of a service scheme. The materials return to the bank after a defined use period.
Manufacturer
Material Formulation
Material Bank P1
Commercial Distributors
P2
Substance
P3
Additives
End User Material Recovery & Recycling
Figure 1: Material flows in the Intelligent Materials Pooling
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Philips EcoDesign Approach
Over more than 15 years of experience in EcoDesign has given us insight in what works and what doesn’t work when improving product concepts. One of the most important learning’s worth sharing, EcoDesign is a process where you have to pass through different learning steps before you can you are up to speed, (you need to learn to crawl and walk before you can run). Working on EcoDesign by just teaching designers, performing LCA’s will not lead to the significant enough product changes. EcoDesign requires an integral approach where nearly all company disciplines play a role: Research & Development, Purchasing, Product Planning & Management as well as Marketing have their own distinct role in this multi-disciplinary process.
LCA reproduces improvement points of the products under investigation often in quantities, which most people do not understand, like the Eco Indicator 99 method. A relevant frame of reference to understand the meaning of 1 mPt (unit of the Eco Indicator) is missing for most business people. Therefore LCA is translated in six “Green Focal Areas” (GFA’s), Figure 2. Since most of Philips products use electricity, energy efficiency is a critical focus point in our EcoDesign approach. Energy consumption is ‘a’ and many cases ‘the’ dominant factor in the total environmental impact.
In EcoDesign 4 main activities can be distinguished: • Benchmarking and Knowledge development • Vision and Strategy development • Tools, and • Performance measurement. The approach of these activities has to be specific and understandable for all layers of the organization. First of all the most important environmental aspects of the product (group) over the entire product life cycle has to be determined. Philips uses the Lifecycle approach to determine a product’s overall environmental improvement. One or more of our “Green Focal Areas” (see Figure 2) must be significantly better, resulting in a lower total environmental impact. We review the total impact of a product on the environment in every stage of its lifecycle – e.g. raw materials, production, transport, consumer use and end-of-life. This process avoids simply shifting burdens between different stages, for example reducing weight while increasing energy consumption. The strategy is supported by thorough scientific research and public data, as well as many details from in-house Philips processes. This is quantified in Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) scores such as Eco Indicator 99 and specific LCA databases for Philips components. There are different tools to investigate the environmental impact of a product; of which Life Cycle Assessment is one of the most comprehensive and thorough methods. Depending on the type of product and the objectives quicker benchmark methods are available. However, a holistic approach (life cycle thinking) is essential to avoid sub-optimizing and it helps finding environmental priorities.
Figure 2: “Green Focal Areas” of Philips
The big advantage of the using GFA’s is that they are: • Easy to understand, and • Expressed in measurable and known units (e.g. Kg, kWh/yr, Hours etc) The GFA’s are much more tangible and can be used to determine actions, objectives, roadmaps and measurements. In benchmarking it’s important to involve products of direct competitors and/or competing technologies next to the own product portfolio. The selected reference depends on the possibilities of comparing, sometimes competitors are either too expensive (in case of large medical systems), not yet on the market (in case of innovations) or too divers for a good comparison. A gap analysis indicates your strong and weak points in the field of environment. Based on the benchmark results a sustainability policy, mission and vision can be formulated, leading to an innovative strategy and EcoDesign product roadmaps. The developed EcoDesign processes in Philips are integrated in the normal company processes and should not be seen as separate processes or projects. Furthermore the targets from the roadmaps are integrated in the R&D and product development. In principle a target for each of the six GFA’s is established and checked in the different milestones of the product creation process, so that if needed the product development can be corrected.
Last but not least experience taught us that different measuring systems are needed to steer the organization, including: • Capability indicators to determine EcoDesign level of businesses;
the
• Organizational indicators to determine the deployment and status within the organization; • Result indicators, like successful EcoDesign projects, green sales, green products and awards. Green products need to be significantly better in one or more Green Focal Areas, resulting in a lower total environmental impact (using the Life Cycle approach). Green products are identified with the “Green logo”, Figure 3.
As indicated in the C2C concept dismantling and regaining of materials has been an interest of Philips. Since the early nineties, Philips has been active in this field when it founded Mirec, an Eindhoven based recycling company nowadays belonging to the international recycling company SIMS Recycling Solutions. Recycling and disposal is still an important green focal area in the assessment of the environmental performance of Philips products. The similarities in the comparison of the approaches holds in the above described environmental aspects of avoiding hazardous substances and recycling and disposal. A fundamental difference exists in assessing all the environmental aspects having a distinct contribution to the total environmental impact of a product. Although material regain is important, research proofs that energy consumption is the main contributor in most of the consumer electronics. Philips’ holistic approach is essential to avoid simply shifting burdens between different stages. An improvement in material regain negatively influencing the energy consumption will not benefit an ecological balance.
Figure 3: Philips ‘Green Logo’
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Comparison between the C2C and Philips approach
In both the C2C concept and the Philips EcoDesign approach avoidance of undesired substances and chemicals is an important integrated step in designing a product. While cradle-to-cradle is about ‘the passive positive list’ as a vital systematic assessment of each ingredient or component, Philips has built and maintained a large database for classifying components and parts with respect to their environmental specifics for many years. Experience shows however that the detailed knowledge of each and every component is a tremendous exercise; on several levels progress has been made to limit the amount of work. Quite some know-how is only available after having used and experienced the environmental impact of a product or substance for years. This is demonstrated by the many discussions and extensions of restricted substances lists in environmental legislations like RoHS. In these discussions it becomes apparent that the scope and comparison are very relevant. Stating that X, Y or Z is bad depends on the alternative to which it is compared. Unfortunately in many cases more precise assessment is needed to determine if the product is an improvement of not. After understanding the negative impact one of the difficulties is tracing back the use and location of the substance in all the components purchased from a fast variety of suppliers.
Discussion
An initiative like the Cradle-to-Cradle concept is very valuable and should not disappear from the public attention without being seriously considered. As highlighted in the media and in papers on different occasions global society has to adapt its consumption habits otherwise we will be confronted with a shortage in resources very soon. The speed of the global development with the current consumption pattern would demand a multiplication of the resources equal to 5 globs instead of the one we have. C2C has a very strong focus on extending the life and quality of material flows, contending that ecoefficiency and cradle-to-cradle design eliminates the fundamental problems of eco-efficiency strategies and ensure availability of raw materials for industrial processes. There is a significant limitation in this approach since it is more than questionable if ecoeffectiveness and C2C design solves, • Availability of resources challenged by the current demand of developing economies, • If lifetime extension is the preferred option. This holds only if the product environmental characteristics change a little bit with each new product generation. If product families/technologies are evolving quickly it could be more effective to change over to a new product sooner than later. This holds true for many products, like electronics, lighting but also for automobiles.
• A strong reduction of the environmental impact caused during the entire life cycle of electronic or electrical products,
be quantified. Simply said it shows the thermodynamics of any recycling process.
Since energy consumption contributes roughly to 60to-80% to the overall environmental impact of an electronic product, a focus on its energy efficiency is therefore vital. Arguments that alternative energy sources will take away the energy consumption issue are shortsighted; energy consumption has a local availability aspect and a strong link to the CO2 emission problem. A holistic approach balancing changes to the product design is necessary. When discussing the concept of eco-effectiveness ensuring material availability through the formation of continuous, cyclical material flow metabolisms, the following factors need to be considered: i) Ownership of the materials: C2C concept suggests a change from ownership of products to providing service. The proposed leasing model is an idea tested in several EU countries. Although this shift in ownership seems conceptually correct, the consumer acceptance was very limited; the dominating consumer mindset is still in favour of ownership and freedom of brand choice. Even for product services to B2B where more rational decision-making is done, many hurdles are still present; ii) The attitude of consumers towards returning products at the end of their useful life needs to change a lot before a closed cyclical C2C metabolism can be realized: • The UNU WEEE Review study [5,6] showed for 2005 that only 40% of large, 25% of medium and 0% of small sized appliances are collected and treated. A 100% return rate is beyond any realistic expectation, there are always losses somewhere in the system; • Studies like the one of GfK Benelux Services [7] and Witteveen+Bos [8] illustrate that the regain of materials start with the right return mentality. An immense quantity of goods remain in households and finally returned the goods (dis)appear mainly in unofficial, non-controlled channels; • Appliances with a end-of-life value are particularly interesting for commercial trading (most of the time unofficial, non-controlled channels), as illustrated at the limited return of mobile phone
