Recycling telephone housings into wall mounts for the MERLIN LEGENDand PARTNER II communications systems

摘要

Resource conservation is among the major goals of life cycledesign. One way to achieve resource conservation is by means of usingrecycled materials in the manufacture of products. Of course, recyclingmay also make sense from a purely economic perspective. In this paper anAT&T internal recycling project is discussed in which 100%post-consumer ABS (acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene) plastic flakederived from scrapped telephone housings is used for making wall mountpanels for the MERLIN LEGEND and PARTNER II business telephone systems.Issues pertinent to the use of recycled plastic, such as the material'ssuitability in view of its somewhat degraded physical properties, andthe implications of applicable product standards and regulations, arereviewed as well