A novel approach and tool adapted to the eco-design of consumer electronic goods

In today's consumerist society, companies, in all activity sectors, must produce ever increasing amounts of goods if they want to live. This is particularly true in the field of consumer electronics which has, over the last decade, regularly brought to the market new innovations such as: flash drives, ebooks, digital audio or video players, 3 or 4G mobile phones, ebooks … and has continuously made these products evolve towards newer and more innovative versions that propose new and more attractive functionnalities. Moreover, as the world becomes increasingly aware of environmental issues and as more companies are willing and encouraged to improve their environmental efficiency, methods and tools must be defined and implemented to determine the environmental impacts of the manufacture, transportation, use and disposal of their products. Life cyle assessment (LCA) is a method that was designed for assessing the environmental impact of a product throughout its complete lifecycle. This paper describes our methodology for LCA and how it is implemented in the SIEC system to help users carry out the LCA of their products and use the results to enhance eco-design.