Life-cycle assessment of electronics manufacturing processes

The growing willingness of manufacturers to accept responsibility for the environmental stewardship of their products has not yet been widely matched by an effort to make manufacturing processes more environmentally responsible across their life cycle, with the exception of a few "pollution prevention" activities. However, the environmental assessment of processes across their entire life span is particularly important, since processes often remain in place for decades once they are developed. This paper presents a formalism for evaluating the environmental implications of products and discusses topics at each life stage that are suitable for review by researchers, developers, and manufacturers in the electronics industry.