On the way to green mobile products

Future electronic products will not only require high quality and reliability as well as convincing properties in use, they will have to be economically efficient and environmentally compatible over their whole life cycle. For the design of such electronic products, product evaluation tools are necessary to improve the various properties step by step. For environmental assessment, the EE toolbox is applied which was developed especially for electronic products based on material content. A new tool for the evaluation of polymers has completed this modular approach which takes thermal treatment after use into account. With regard to the general discussion of global warming and the need for CO/sub 2/ reduction, characteristic values of incineration are used for rating the system.