Market Forces and Regulations Converge on ECO-DESIGN

摘要

A common misconception is that eco-design adds costs to products. In fact, nearly every eco-design principle reduces product costs. The growing demand for more environmentally sustainable products, coupled with increasing regulatory restrictions, is motivating electronics manufacturers to leverage eco-design principles and the circular economy model to simultaneously build business value, decrease product costs and mitigate harm to the environment and society. Progress in eco-design since the 2017 iNEMI Roadmap has been driven largely by upcoming requirements from regulatory bodies and competition-driven initiatives; the latter stems from stakeholders' increasing awareness of the toxicity, CO_2 emissions, social inequities, and costs attached to many materials in the extraction, manufacturing, transportation, use and post-use phases.