Professional Documents
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Table 2: Correlation 5 ways to make money and benefits matrix Particular significance is
attributed to the processes at
Making money through Table 3 shows that a variety the very beginning of the
eco-design (Design for of activities can be envisaged whole procedure; that is, idea
Environment) that create combined environ- generation supported by
mental and financial improve- benchmarking and strategic
In order to make eco-design ments. In order to structure input. In this stage positioning
operational in industrial or- this wealth of opportunity, two with respect to the environ-
ganizations it is useful to split issues should be considered in mental performance of com-
the field up in five focal area’s particular: petitors gives strong direction
共Stevels, forthcoming兲: · Setting up an appropriate about what is to be achieved
· Energy consumption procedure for eco-design in later steps of eco-design.
· Material application · Setting priorities 共an eco- Apart from being the basis for
· Packaging and transport design procedure is given in ideas, benchmarking also
· Chemical content Figure 2兲. gives ‘learning for free’, by
· End-of-life / recyclability flagging up improvements and
solutions which competitors
have already put into practice.
Focal area Eco-design action Environmental benefit Cost benefit for pro- Cost benefit for user
ducer
Energy Use of more powerful Less energy used Lower bill of materials Lower electricity bill
Ic’s, miniaturization
Material Less material Less resources Lower bill of materials Lower price of product
Use of recycled mate- Closing the loop Lower bill of materials Lower price
rial
Packaging, Less packaging mate- Less resources, Lower cost Lower price of product
Transport rials Less waste
On the basis of such scores a the electronic industry where the ‘as such’ 共that is taking
customer can assist individual up to 70–80% of the bill of green marketing out of its
suppliers in defining the areas materials 共and of energy con- isolation兲 rather than refrain-
of improvement. Since all en- sumption of future users兲 is ing on developing green prod-
vironmental items are directly related to suppliers. ucts.
associated with cost items, a
cost reduction potential can be This ‘enabling design’ by sup- An analysis of consumer atti-
defined as follows: pliers has produced impressive tudes 共Stevels, forthcoming兲
results: has shown that worldwide
Price reduction 共P r兲 ⫽ · lowering energy consump- only 20–30% of the popula-
P r standard ⫹ 共1-E兲 P r tion of TV’s and increasing tion consider environment to
playing 共use兲 time of port- be really important in buying
With E being the environmen- able products by making decisions irrespective of the
tal performance as calculated available dedicated 共‘smart’, country concerned; for another
using the formulae given by green兲 integrated circuits 40–50% it is ‘nice to have’,
Nagel 共2000兲. 共IC’s兲. whereas for 20–30% of the
· decreasing the amounts of people green is unimportant or
The Design for the Supply plastics needed for housings even negative. These figures
Chain Concept suggests that by applying gas-assisted make clear that in order to
the customer expects suppliers moulding and by using recy- cater to a majority 共70–80%兲
to make designs with the par- cled materials. of the public, the ‘nice to
ticular aim of lowering the · designing full cardboard have’ category has to be
environmental load and the packaging for consumer shetted into the category of
costs at the supplier. Basically electronics products with ‘interested buyers’. This is
this involves similar process weights below 10 kg. done by the environment AND
management for Eco-design, ... strategy, that is, by linking
however with the difference environmental benefits with
that this is applied upstream Making money by green other benefits as specified in
rather than downstream. The marketing and sales Table 1 共see customer col-
paradigm shift is that the sup- umn兲. Such a link between
plier and customer jointly in- Basically this strategy comes environmental effect and cus-
vestigate how a certain func- down to selling more products tomer benefit is shown in a
tionality can best be realised, 共preferably with higher mar- schematic form in the table
rather than that a given em- gins兲. Because they are below:
bodiment is forced down the ‘green’, at first sight, this
supplier’s throat. As special- strategy seems to be an abor- This table shows that large
ists in their field, suppliers can tive one since it is generally proportions of the buyers are
make substantial contributions recognized that ‘green as interested in all green focal
to enable producers to lower such’ does not sell. As will be areas – up to 80% for energy
their environmental load over pointed out below this state- reduction. It is to be realised
the life cycle of the product. ment can be right. However, however that in current mar-
This is particularly apparent in this should lead to eliminating kets in brand image – in this
Documentation:
· Environmental 共annual兲 re-
ports
· Brochures eg. Philips
“Greening your Business”
· Scorecards/reviews
· Internet
· Press release/free publicity/
technical, scientific articles
· The recycled content of ality e.g. for audio sets so questionnaires, cost benefits
cardboard has consistly in- that only parts of the set have not yet been addressed.
creased to 60% worldwide. have to replaced with de- Use of the environmental per-
· For TV’s worldwide and for velopment of user require- spective to tackle quality and
other consumer electronics ments and technology reject issues is virtually ab-
products exported to a dif- developments. sent. Green marketing and
ferent part of the world, vol- · Services – Increasing the sales and forms of paradigm
ume reduction is more im- capability of electronic prod- shift are well recognised as
portant than weight ucts to download from the opportunities but are still
reduction, both from the internet 共music, film, infor- weak at the executional level.
ecological and the economic mation兲 Overall the customer perspec-
perspective. tive is still an unknown terri-
· In products with weight be- In all these cases environmen- tory in environmental think-
low approximately 10 kg, tal gains and economic benefit ing. There is a need to
EPS can be replaced by for producers and users go 共or drastically improve here be-
other materials. will go兲 ‘hand in hand’. cause customer care should be
· The shock resistance ap- the basis for market-driven
proach works out well, par- environmental improvement.
ticularly for certain catego- Current implementation of the The business perspective and
ries of audio products. five ways to make money societal perspective are weak
while being green too: this is an indication that
Paradigm shifts also play an ‘environment’ is an item that
important role in conceptual A review of best practices of is developing in isolation
changes 共next to the ‘improve- implementation of the princi- rather than being integrated
ment’ approach as demon- ples to make money while into mainstream business.
strated above兲. Examples are: being green yields the follow- There is still a big improve-
· The application of a differ- ing picture 共Table 7兲: ment potential in the organiza-
ent physical principle: tion of process: it seems that
– Human-powered radio The overall implementation of technicalities are still dominat-
versus battery operated the five principles is still ing the management of green.
radio weak; only eco-design is con-
– Monitor with Liquid sistently addressed well al-
Crystal Display 共LCD兲 though organization of the
screen instead of Cathode processes and customer per-
Ray Tube 共CRT兲. spective are still weak. Sup-
· Life cycle optimization plier involvement is still re-
– Create modular function- stricted to sending out
References
The Eco indicator ’95 method, Nagel, M., Environmental Supply- Stevels, A.L.N., Green Marketing
Novem/RIVM editors, ISBN 90- Chain Management versus Green of Consumer Electronics Prod-
72130-77-4. EcoscanT, a windows Procurement and Environmental ucts, Proc. ‘Electronics Goes
program for the calculation of one Supply-Chain Management versus Green’ conference, September
figure eco scores. Available from Life Cycle Analysis, Proc. Int. 2000, Berlin.
Turtle Bay: info@turtlebay.nl, see Symposium in Electronics and
Stevels, A.L.N., Integration of Eco
also www.luna.nl/turtlebay. Environment, p. 219 and 118, May
design is to the business, in: M.S.
2000, San Francisco, ISBN
Hinkley, K. (1999), dissertation, Hundal and J.W. Wiley (eds), The
0-7803-5962-3.
Stanford University, info available Mechanical Life Cycle Handbook:
from K. Ishii: Good Environmental Design and
ishii@cdr.stanford.edu. Manufacturing. September 2001.