Do Sustainable Computers Result from Design for Environment and Extended Producer Responsibility?: Analyzing E-Waste Programs in Europe and Canada SoonHee OH, Environment & Geography, University of Manitoba Dr. Shirley Thompson, NRI University of Manitoba CONTACT S Thompson; S Oh Natural Resources Institute U of M 70 Dysart Road University of Manitoba Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada R3T 2N2 Phone: (204) 474-7170 Fax: (204) 261-0038 E-mail:
[email protected];
[email protected] EXCUTIVE SUMMARY Industrial manufacturers are increasingly being challenged to minimize the environmental impacts of their products. With rapid improvements in technology, most computers are disposed of within two years, rather than at the end of their functional life cycle of approximately 10 years. The problem of electronic waste (e-waste) is not only its growing volume but also its toxicity. The use of toxic metals and materials in computers results in environmental and health risks when computers are manufactured, incinerated, landfilled, burned or melted down during recycling. By looking at the Design for the Environment (DfE) and Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) aspects of the European Union’s Waste Electronic and Electrical Equipment (WEEE-IT) approach compared to see what is required for sustainability design to improve the North American product stewardship approach, particularly in Manitoba, Canada. EPR places responsibility on the producer to take-back products and meet recycling rate targets. The recycling rate target of 75% in the European Union WEEE-IT directive are more than five times the rate of recycling and recovery as the voluntary EPR has only resulted in 14% recycling in North America, with most electronic waste (e-waste) going to landfills or incinerators. Furthermore, under the WEEE-IT’s Regulation of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) toxic chemicals like lead and mercury are not allowed in new computers, preventing pollution at the factory, recycling facility, etc. In contrast product stewardship does not provide incentives or requirements for DfE and there are few programs operative in 2006 in North America. For example, although the Waste Reduction and Pollution Prevention (WRAP) Act was passed to facilitate the diversion of e-wastes (and other products) away from the landfills, Manitoba does not currently have end-of-life or DfE programs to deal with e-waste, although it has a product stewardship framework within which it can develop programs. Given international trends and the current situation, the United States and Canada will need to consider EPR and other legislation to promote DfE, for which WEEE-IT is an excellent model to learn from.
INTRODUCTION The United Nation’s definition of “sustainability” is about delivering economic growth, ecological balance, and social responsibility (Xu and Morrison, 2005). Achieving sustainability for the next generation as well as the present will require intensive changes in political structures, business performance, accepted social ethics and environmental education systems, and many other areas, (Farrell, 1996). In the area of product development, thinking of future generations requires addressing the volume of waste, the toxicity of products, the environmental injustice of recycling and manufacturing industries and the mass consumerism of disposable items. Environmental considerations in product design include: waste minimization, reuse or recyclability, material conservation, pollution reduction, lower toxicity and “eco-design” (Schwartz and Gattuso, 2002; Walls, 2006). This paper analyzes the sustainability of computers by comparing the extended producer responsibility (EPR) and other electronic waste (e-waste) directives in the European Union to North America, particularly, the programming in Manitoba, Canada. Extended producer responsibility (EPR) and design for environment (DfE) incorporate product recycling, product regulation, and product design as solutions in pursuits of sustainability. In 2006, the European Union adopted EPR to deal with large and growing volume of discarded electronics and other products while the United States and Canada have product stewardship policies but no EPR or comprehensive product policy (Sachs, 2006; Short, 2004). The policy instruments that lie under the EPR umbrella include different types of product fees and taxes commonly, such as advance recycling fees (ARFs), product take-back mandates, virgin material taxes, and combinations of these instruments. Other policies include pay-as-you-throw, waste collection charges, and landfill bans. A cost-effective instrument is one that exploits all the possible avenues for waste reduction. i.e., source reduction, recycling, material substitution, and product design changes, and not just a single method. This paper looks at the problem of computer wastes and analyzes the different approaches in Europe and North America to determine their effectiveness at achieving sustainability through environmental design. The term “extended producer responsibility” was first started in Sweden in the 1980s and the first EPR “take-back” program was created in Germany in 1991, known as the “Toepfer Decree” (Schwartz and Gattuso, 2002; Short, 2004; Walls, 2006). The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD, 1999) defines EPR as an environmental policy approach where: “the producers’ responsibility, physical and/or financial, for a product is extended to the post-consumer stage of a product’s life cycle, to provide incentives to producers to incorporate environmental considerations in the design of their products.” The original impetus was to relieve municipalities of some of the financial burden of waste management, and to provide incentives to producers to reduce resources, use more secondary materials, and undertake product design changes to reduce waste (OECD, 2001 in Walls, 2003). THE COMPUTER WASTE PROBLEM With rapid improvements in technology, computer products quickly become obsolete and are wasted (McCarthy, 2002), as the technological life-span of a personal computer has shrunk from four or five years to two years. The main reason for purchasing a new computer is not to replace a nonfunctioning system but to keep up with rapidly changing technologies (Williams and Sasaki, 2003). In 1998, 4% of the EU’s total municipal waste stream was e-waste (6 million tonnes) (Lin, Yuan and Davis, 2002). The growth of e-waste is about three times higher than that of the average municipal waste stream and is a major source of heavy metals and halogenated substances to the municipal waste stream. The presence of these and other hazardous substances render the conventional methods of waste disposal environmentally unsuitable for discarded computers. Landfilling results in leaching of
heavy metals and brominated compounds, contaminating the soil and groundwater beneath a site and surrounding area. For example, the European Commission estimates that consumer electronics constitute 40% of the lead found in landfills. In 2000, 90% of e-waste was landfilled, incinerated or recovered without any pretreatment, no removal of components containing toxic mercury switches or lithium batteries in Europe and North America. However, under the WEEE-IT EPR legislation, European countries ban computer waste from all landfills and incineration, making recycling/reuse a requirement (Sachs, 2006). In contrast, USA and Canada have done little to address this problem with few province and statewide landfill bans (McCarthy, 2002; Short, 2004). The problem is larger in the US where between 1997 and 2003, an estimated 254 million obsolete computers became obsolete and another 250 million will become obsolete between 2004 and 2007 in the U.S. (National Safety Council, 1999). Some 163,420 computers and televisions will become obsolete in the US everyday, weighing in at almost 3,513 tons by 2006 (Zazzau, 2006). This is based on the estimate that 75 percent of “obsolete” computers are stockpiled in people’s homes (Gattuso, 2005). The large volume of waste combined with its toxicity magnifies the problem of e-waste. Computer waste emits billions of pounds of toxic materials into the air, water, and soil. Most of these toxic materials are persistent and bioaccumulative toxins (PBTs) that result in environmental and health risks when computers are manufactured, incinerated, landfilled, burned or melted down during recycling (Lincoln et al., 2005; Schmidt, 2002; Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, 2001). A cathode ray tubes (CRT), the most common type of computer monitor, typically contains four pounds of lead to protect users from the tubes’ x-rays (Gattuso, 2005). Lead is a teratogen and reproductive hazard. As well, lead causes damage to the central and peripheral nervous systems, blood system and kidneys in humans (Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, 2001). Circuit boards and batteries are also full of lead, in addition to smaller amounts of mercury and hexavalent chromium. Given these harmful materials, many consumer electronics fail the Toxicity Characteristic Leaching Procedure (TCLP) (Sachs, 2006). As well, brominated flame retardants are used on PCBs, cables and plastic casing (Lin, Yan and Davis, 2001). Hazardous computer wastes are dumped in developing countries and in Eastern Europe from Western European countries, USA, Canada, and Japan. This is environmental unjust and undermines ecosystem health. These products are exported when the state has banned various metals in their landfills or incinerators, rather than pay the higher labour and environmental costs for recycling locally (McCarthy, 2002). However, the new WEEE-IT regulation requires that .EU e-waste be recycled at facilities having as high or higher environmental and safety standards as in the EU. Up to 80 percent of all electronic waste collected for recycling in the United States actually ends up on container ships bound for Asia (China, Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Manila, and Pakistan) all of which have poor regulation and management of E-waste (Iles, 2004; Terazono, 2006; Yanez et al., 2002). When demanufacturing operations are done in North America they are often manned by unskilled or semiskilled labor such as prisoners, former welfare recipients, or mentally disabled individuals. This is environmentally unjust, as these workers are often working in hazardous conditions and often do not earn a living wage (Price, 1999). For example, at the Atwater federal US penitentiary, 250 inmates process 450 CRTs daily in the recycling plant. The workers’ wages range from US$.23 to $1.15 per hour and work without safety equipment, such as gloves, dust masks to reduce exposures to toxic lead and barriers to prevent physical risks from cuts and lead exposure. For example, hammers are often used to break the CRTs rather than this work being done by a sealed crushing machine which is typical in commercial recycling (Perry, 2005).
DESIGN FOR THE ENVIRONMENT (DfE) In the opening address of the European Roundtable on Cleaner Production in 2001, the six principles from the Design for the Environment (DfE) Multimedia Implementation (DEMI) Project were promoted. The DEMI principles are efficiency, appropriateness, sufficiency, equity, systems and scale (Fletcher and Dewberry, 2002). Indeed, design-orientation is at the heart of the beginning-oflife activities. Armstrong (1997) explains that: “the goal of DfE is to enable design teams to create eco-efficient products without compromising their cost, quality, and schedule constraints.” To achieve this goal, a full awareness of sustainable product materials and life cycle assessments is required. As applies to computers, new technologies would be required to create more value while substituting harmful computer materials and improving remanufacturing, recyclability and reusability ways. The adoption in 1996 by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) of the 14000 series of standards for environment management systems is likely to push firms to implement many aspects of DfE (Armstrong, 1997). Schwartz and Gattuso (2002) state, “sustainability of these programs hinges on cost-effectiveness and efficacy in achieving a combination of product-quality goals with reducing environmental impacts.” DfE considerations include environmental impacts throughout the product’s entire life-cycle assessment require consideration of material selection, energy use, extended component life cycles, disassembly, reprocessing, remanufacturing (Armstrong, 1997). The wastes, crude products, and other negative effects are the consequence of outdated and unintelligent design (McDonough and Braungart, 2002). If DfE only promote re-design, without engaging the designer in re-thinking the entire product, results can be substantially inferior (Michlek et al, 2005). However, manufacturers are unwilling to improve product and environmental quality if it costs more. Firms are only willing to spend 0.1% more on a product to improve environmental quality (Mattews et al, 1997). Thus, usually design takes on the character of being a problem-solving activity for a component rather than product development from its conceptual stage (Fallman, 2003). Designers are usually not the decision makers guiding product development but designing based on already selected criteria: “the designer is powerless to influence the sustainability of a new product unless it is one of the specifically mentioned criteria for the new development” (Cull and Malins, 2003). As well as not having the power to make manufacturing design specifications, designers at present are rarely schooled in sustainability (Ali Khan 1996 in Fletcher and Dewberry, 2002; Perdan, Aszpagi and Clift, 2000). Thus, individuals do not see their role in creating environmental problems, as designers or as consumers (Short, 2004). Design and engineering schools should take note of the value of sustainable education that “education is critical for promoting sustainable development and improving the capacity of the people to address sustainable development issues” (UNCED, 1992). There are many reuse success programs in which the economic benefits are evident in practice (Bosch, 2002; Fiskel, 2001; Schwartz and Gattuso, 2002; Tomer et al., 2004). For example, using the DfE approach, Hewlett-Packard (HP) was the first corporation to create its own “tear it down” effort to accompany its successful “build it up” operation called Product Recycling Solutions (PRS). HP launched its product stewardship program in 1992 (Schwartz and Gattuso, 2002) and has operated the program in which they take back old equipment for recycling, including pickup, transportation, evaluation for reuse or donation, and environmentally sound recycling for products ranging from PCs and printers to servers and scanners (McCarthy, 2002). HP has also witnessed numerous benefits from implementing DfE principles to support product recovery and to reduce resource and energy consumption for possible advantages in the marketplace. By applying reuse at Hewlett-Packard, a defect reduction of 15 percent was achieved and productivity increased by 57 percent (Tomer et al.,
2004). DfE prevents or minimizes any negative impacts to human health and safety, or to the ecosystem, that may occur at any point in the life of an HP product from cradle to grave. The design process of HP has subscribed to the principle of reuse, designing its computers for easy disassembly and recyclability, such as circuit boards, chips, and precious metals found in some of the older computers, including the hard drive, mouse, and speakers. All are separated out for reuse or sale and the remainder is recycled fully; no waste is sent to landfill (Schwartz and Gattuso, 2002). Ironically, a few well-established companies have delayed adoption of sustainability because they perceive it as a threat analogous to the introduction of more stringent environmental regulations, and are adopting a conservative “wait and see” attitude (Fiskel, 2001). DESIGNING FOR REUSE AND NOT JUST RECYCLE Mattews at al (1997) explains: “there are two activities in the end-of-life program: reuse and recycling”. Recycling is the series of activities by which discarded materials are collected, sorted, processed and used in the production (King, Burgess, Ijomah and McMahon, 2005). Although recycling reduces virgin material use, it still requires additional energy to be used to reform them into manufactured products (King, Burgess, Ijomah and McMahon, 2005). Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition (2001) estimates that the cost of recycling computers ranges from $10 to $30 per unit while this is less expensive than the estimated $25 to 50 per unit cost for disposal. In contrast, remanufacturing, reconditioning and repair should save money for the producer and reduce costs for the consumer. Reuse can include repair, recondition, or remanufacture. Also, it is environmentally preferable to reuse computers an extra two or three years than to recycle their components. Reducing the amount of computer waste relies heavily upon the reuse of systems that may be out of date, but fully functional (Williams and Sasaki, 2003). Remanufacturing may well be the best strategy as it maintains the embodied energy of virgin production, preserving the intrinsic “added value” of the product for the manufacturer and enables the resultant products to be sold ‘as new” with updated features if necessary (King, Burgess, Ijomah and McMahon, 2005). Components and materials from the end of life durable products can often be refurbished to substitute for virgin parts to be used as spares or in remanufacturing (Toffel, 2004). Upgrading individual components of a computer at the design stage, such as the hard drive, software or processor, costs less than a new computer (Williams and Sasaki, 2003). Lund (1985) estimates that a remanufacturing product only require 20-25% of the energy used in its initial formation and can be resold into lower-priced markets, typically costing 60% of the original production cost. However, a barrier to the lack of a credible and stable demand for the products is a barrier to remanufacturing (Bras and Mclntosh, 1999 in King, Burgess, Ijomah and McMahon, 2005). The noncommercial computer refurbishing field is a minuscule part of the overall computer recycling industry in the U.S. and Canada. Over each computer’s life cycle, reselling or upgrading computers saves 5 to 20 times more energy than recycling and would provide a public good if provided to organizations for educational purposes. For example, public schools have large needs for computers at 28.7 million computers in U.S, which may be met by reusing or remanufactured computers, as recent state and local budget cuts otherwise severely limit the affordability of having computers in the classroom (Lynch, 2004). DESIGN FOR ENVIRONMENT AS EXTENDED PRODUCER RESPONSIBILITY. EPR extends the “polluter pays principle”, which implies national authorities should internalize environmental costs and “that the polluter should, in principle, bear the cost of pollution, with due regard to the public interest and without distorting international trade and investments” (Schwartz and
Gattuso, 2002; Short, 2004; Walls, 2003) to the producer for disposal costs. With this in mind, EPR typically requires producers: to take-back their products and meet recycling rate targets. EPR policy places responsibility for a product’s end-of-life environmental impacts on the original producer and seller of that product (Short, 2004; Walls, 2003). This approach provides incentives for producers to make design changes to products that would reduce waste management costs. Those changes should include improving product recyclability and reusability, reducing material usage and downsizing products, lower energy consumption and greenhouse gas production, reduce dependency on virgin materials, spur new business enterprises, generate new job opportunities, and provide financial and savings to companies improving their design, production and distribution processes (Quinn, 2006). EUROPEAN UNION’S APPROACH TO SUSTAINABLE COMPUTERS Under EPR regulations in Europe, producers are legally responsible in four ways, having:1) Economic responsibility to pay all or a portion of end-of-life management, 2) Physical responsibility to take physical possession of their products after consumer discard, 3) Information responsibility to involve mandatory for product labeling such as component or material lists, to reduce the cost of third-party involvement in post-consumer recycling, and 4) Liability rules to impose financial liability for environmental damage and clean-up costs from disposal of hazardous products (Toffel, 2002 in Sachs, 2006). At the very least, EPR results in a dedicated source of funds for recycling infrastructure to provide collection and best available technology (Sachs, 2006). In contrast, policy-makers in the US and Canada recognize that local governments do not have the resources to effectively manage certain waste streams, however, without EPR in place they are stuck footing the bill for this municipal solid waste (Sheehan and Spiegelman, 2006). Whether EU’s EPR will result in a sustainable design for computers is uncertain: “it is very difficult to identify and document DfE in practice, and nearly impossible to definitely attribute to EPR policy any changes that are identified” (Walls, 2006). However, WEEE-IT’s Restriction of the Use of Certain Hazardous Substances (RoHS) is expected to create new designs that are more recyclable and allow for remanufacturing or reconditioning. Under the new WEEE-IT directive of EU in 2006, new electrical and electronic equipment put on the market will not contain hazardous materials (Macauley, Palmer and Shih, 2003). The RoHS directive will ban various metals and brominated flame retardants in the production of electrical and electronic equipment. Although this is considered to be good for the environment little is known about potential substitutes (Schwartz and Gattuso, 2002). The benefit of avoiding health effects associated with cathode ray tube (CRT) disposal appears to far outweigh the costs (Macauley, Palmer and Shih, 2003) and will surely promote design for the environment. According to the WEEE Management Regulations for the EU member, 75 percent rate of recovery by average weight per WEEE-IT and 65 percent rate of component, material, and substance reuse and recycling by average per WEEE-IT must be achieved by December 31, 2006 (Nakajima and Vanderburg, 2005). Some evaluation of target feasibility has occurred for national recycling targets, showing that although goals are not being met they are close. For example, the target for total recovery and recycling in U.K was 63 percent and 59.2 percent; actual rates achieved which fell short of the target by about 10% reaching 55.6 percent and 49.7 percent in 2004 (Nakajima and Vanderburg, 2005). Recently in U.K, a goal of 70 percent for overall recovery and 66.5 percent for recycling by 2008 was established (Walls, 2006). Another example is the Ordinance on the Return, the Taking Back and the Disposal of Electrical and Electronic Appliances (ORDEA) in Switzerland provides an example of a mandatory national legislation for WEEE Program, which began in 1998 (Lin, Yan, and Davis, 2002). The achievement of the ORDEA was to collect 8.5 kilograms per capita in 2002. More than 75 percent of end-of-life equipment is recycled, approximately 20 percent is incinerated, and
three percent ends up in landfill. (Vossenaar, Santucci, and Ramungul, 2006). Thus, although high targets are being set and a good rate is achieved, still a significant amount of waste (25% to 50%) of materials is not recovered for recycling and reuse, presumably ending up in landfills or incinerators, releasing their toxic chemicals. That some 100,000 tons are incinerated or landfilled each year means computer waste product has not been stemmed at its source mass consumption of this disposal product is taking places (Lin, Yan, and Davis, 2002). However, these EPR rates are many times better than the results of the voluntary Computer Take-Back Campaigns in the USA and Canada conducted by a few companies, such as Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Sony (Donnelly, 2002 in Short, 2004). So far, only 14% of computers are recycled or reused due to lack of recycling movement and technology in US and perhaps less in Canada (Gattuso, 2005). Table 1: Comparison between Approaches in the European Union and Canada Different Approaches Recycling rates Adequate funds for recycling Collection systems for e-waste Regulation prohibiting heavy metal use in electronics Incentives for Design for Environment Adequate infrastructure in place for recycling and/or reuse Incentives to reuse/ repair/ remanufacture Landfill Ban Environmental Justice
Mass consumption
WEEE-IT EPR 75% Yes (through producers) Yes Yes-RoHs regulation
Manitoba, Canada 14% or less (1). Not applicable for computers but no for other recyclables (2). No (treated as municipal solid waste except for companies with voluntary take back) No
Yes
No
Yes
No recycling infrastructure available for computers. No
Yes
Computer and CRT with lead, mercury still going to landfills Some—WEEE when No - Up to 80 percent of all electronic waste exported for treatment collected for recycling in the United States outside of EU will actually ends up to China (3). have to have treatment in compliance with certain EU standards. No No Yes
(1) (Gattuso, 2005). (2) ARFs for beverage containers, tires and oil but insufficient to develop adequate recycling/reuse infrastructure (Manitoba’s isolated and small communities do not have recycling facilities and no reuse facilities for paper recycling in province or glass recycling. (3) (Iles, 2004)
NORTH AMERICA’S PRODUCT STEWARDSHIP APROACH: MANITOBA, CANADA
CASE STUDY OF
Product stewardship assigns responsibility to everyone along the product chain including producers, sellers, consumers and municipalities – but has been criticized that in practice stewardship does not target the source and so does not result in design change or provide adequate funding for recycling. Industries in the US and Canada have been effective at fighting mandatory fees for producers. For
example the Presidents Council on Sustainable Development abandoned EPR in favour of voluntary, shared responsibilities (Sheehan and Spielgelman 2005) Canada’s approach to product stewardship is similar, although some mandatory regulations have evolved. For example, in Manitoba the Waste Reduction and Pollution Prevention (WRAP) Act was passed to facilitate the diversion of e-wastes (and other products) away from Manitoba, Canada, landfills. WRAP reduces waste by targeting certain products, prescribing the amount of levies and/or deposit and refunds, establishing requirements for manufacturers, distributors and retailers, and reporting requirements (Swanson, 2003). However, Manitoba is now moving away from mandatory product stewardship to a system that “crafts regulations that set forth the governments expectations for association” (Swanson, 2003). These associations called Producer Responsibility Organization (PRO) are made up of appointees from the designated material industry and the provincial government. PROs are charged with the task of 1) developing a convenient and consistent province-wide collection system for these materials, 2) determining a sustainable method for managing the waste generated by their product, 3) undertaking a public awareness campaign to educate consumers about the program, 4) determining how to finance the program, 5) ensuring government-established target for performance are met, and 6) reporting on the finances and performance of the program (Quinn, 2006). The results of product stewardship is not encouraging in Manitoba, with the notable exceptions of used oil and tires. Currently, Manitoba’s waste diversion strategy employs only three of the more than 30 federal and provincial product stewardship programs operating within Canada (Mckerlie, Knight, and Thorp, 2006). Only in the cases of used oil and tires has the producer/seller been responsible for takeback. Manitoba is one of only two provinces that do not have a mandatory deposit return system for beverage containers (Sheehan and Spiegelman, 2005). Instead, Manitoban’s pay ADFs when purchasing oil, tires and bottles (e.g., $0.02 is paid for ADF on beverage containers) as mandated under the Multi Material Stewardship Regulation. Recycling programs are typically underfunded, with inadequate or no recycling services in certain areas, such as the City of Dauphne and the north. As well, recycling of some products is not occurring -- glass, rather than being recycled into glass products is being used instead for gravel in landfill roads. Although a small percentage of the paper is being recycled into insulation in the province most recycled paper is sent out of province for recycling, often to developing countries. Regarding e-waste, 452,724 computer units were landfilled by Manitoba’s population of 1,168,349 in 2004. Manitoba does not currently have end-of-life or DfE programs to deal with e-waste, although it has a product stewardship framework within which it can develop programs. Landfilling could result in leaching of heavy metals and brominated compounds contaminating the soil and groundwater beneath a site and surrounding area. The EU Commission estimates that consumer electronics constitutes 40% of the lead found in landfills. CONCLUSIONS Manitoba does not currently have end-of-life or DfE programs to deal with e-waste, although it has a product stewardship framework within which it can develop these programs. The Waste Reduction and Pollution Prevention (WRAP) Act was passed to facilitate the diversion of e-wastes (and other products) away from Manitoba, Canada, landfills but has not effectively done so. The producer/seller has not been responsible for take-back except in the case of used oil. Presently the municipality collects e-waste and landfills it and taxpayers pay these costs. To incorporate life cycle costs of a computer, the key seems to be that the costs of pollution must be borne by the producer. WEEE-IT provides a good model for Manitoba. By requiring EPR and mandating high 75% recycling rate targets it has funding for recycling and reuse infrastructure. As well, these environmental costs
encourage the producer to change the design to make it less toxic, more recyclable and reusable. This end-of-life approach indeed has an impact on the beginning of life. As well, the beginning-of-life approach, through the RoHS regulation, for example, results in major design changes by stating design criteria. RoHS with EPR have great potential to develop new product lines to improve computer recycling or remanufacturing system by analyzing computer materials to find alternatives where possible at the design stage. The recycling targets and rates of EPR at 75% appear feasible based on the achievements of national programs, resulting in a lot of computer waste being diverted from landfill. However, the volume of waste is so high that even 25% of e-waste amounts to a lot – perhaps more could be targeted. Given these international trends towards sustainable computers and the current approaches of Manitoba needs to consider the WEEE-IT system, with both EPR at the end-of-life and regulatory DfE programs to ban use of lead, mercury, brominated compounds and other toxic chemicals and to require any export of recycled compounds to be at best available technology standards. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Mr. Scott Nicol and Mr. Ratan Bonam are acknowledged for sharing their research with the authors. Thanks also to Faculty of Graduate Studies, the Graduate Studies Association, and Alumni Association at the University of Manitoba. REFERENCES Armstrong, T. (1997). Design for sustainability, Sustainable Consumption and Production. Boehm, B. (2003). Value-Based software engineering, Software Engineering Notes, Vol. 28, No 2. Bosch, J. (2002). Maturity and Evolution in Software product lines: approaches, artifacts and organization, Proceeding of the Second Software Product Line Conference. Bradner, S. & Mankin, A. (1995). The recommendation for the IP next generation protocol, Network Working Group. Bras B. (1997). Incorporating Environmental issues in product design and realization, Industry and Environment, 20(1-2), pp. 1-19. Bras, B. & Mclntosh, M.W. (1999). Product, process and organizational design for remanufacture –an overview of research. Robotics and Computer Integrated Manufacturing 15,pp.167-178. In: King, A. M., Burgess, S.C., Ijomah, W. & McMahon, C. A. (2005). Reducing waste: repair, recondition, remanufacture or recycle?, Sustainable Development. Business and Industry Advisory Committee (BIAC) Statement to the OECD EPR Workshop 3 on Extended and Shared Responsibility for Products Washington, D.C., December 1-3, 1998. Calcott, P. & Walls M. (2006). Can downstream waste disposal policies encourage upstream “design for environment”?, The American Economic Review: Papers and Proceeding of the One Hundred Twelfth Annual Meeting of the American Economic Association., Vol. 90, No. 2. Cull, K., & Malins, J. (2003). Designing a sustainable future: a new approach to influence design practice. http://www.ub.es/5ead/PDF/5%20/CullMalins.pdf. Fiksel, J. (2001). Emergence of a sustainable business community, Pure and Applied Chemistry, Vol.
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