Life cycle assessment of mobile telephones based on greenhouse gases and electricity consumption
Life cycle assessment of mobile telephones based on greenhouse gases and electricity consumption
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Issue Date
2006
Authors
Escobedo, Jorge
Naushad, Mustafa A.
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Abstract
New technologies are often adopted without giving much thought to their possible environmental ramifications. A good example of this is the worldwide adoption of mobile telephone technology, which has resulted in an increasing number of discarded mobile telephones flowing into the global waste stream via municipal landfills. Programs and policies intended to reduce mobile telephone waste have shown little effect against the short life cycle and market saturation of the modern mobile telephone. Life cycle analysis performed on a mobile telephone found that designing and producing mobile telephones that will remain in the market for a longer period of time are less likely to negatively impact the environment than the implementation of programs and policies designed to reuse discarded mobile telephones. This study also found that there is a significant amount of carbon dioxide emissions associated with the electricity consumption throughout the lifecycle of a mobile telephone. This report compares the environmental impact from selected key assembly processes of mobile telephone production with the potential environmental benefits obtained from extending the life cycle of all current mobile telephone designs.
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Environmental engineering