The international Electronics Goes Green Conference 2020, which was held online, attracted 250 registered participants. Innovative solutions for environmentally friendly electronics products, processes and business models were presented in keynote speeches, interactive presentations and workshops. The conclusion of the conference is that there is still a lot that needs to be integrated into corporate processes in order to achieve sustainability, and that digitalization can also make a contribution here.
Green electronics is also successful in the virtual world
For the sixth time, the Fraunhofer Institute for Reliability and Microintegration IZM in Berlin organized the world's largest symposium on sustainability in electronics. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the Electronics Goes Green 2020 conference was held virtually on a specially developed online platform: A mix of pre-recorded presentations (120 expert talks) was posted on the World Wide Web in advance and rounded off with a virtual live event on September 1, 2020. The latter included live keynotes from high-ranking experts and six interactive sessions. Networking options were also provided. 150 people took part in the interactive sessions. There were 40 questions to the keynote speakers via the chat and 200 comments on the pre-recorded presentations. The presentations on green electronics, circular design and sustainable production in all areas of life and the economy had been accessed over 3,000 times by the beginning of September. Like the live broadcasts, they were available on demand for registered participants for several weeks afterwards.
Highlights were the keynotes
The special highlights this year were the keynotes, which were watched by over 200 people in the active live stream including chat.
Eelco Smit from Philips opened the first part of the live day with his keynote on 'Best practices in Sustainability - what can we learn? He explained how this is implemented at Philips and what sustainability concepts other manufacturers rely on.
Sarah Chandler, Environmental Program Officer at Apple, spoke about Apple's roadmap to 2030 and presented the company's innovative approach to climate neutrality and the circular supply chain. Apple wants to make its entire production climate-neutral within the next ten years.
"Green electronics ... can and must become more sustainable more quickly across the board ..."
Another highlight was the iNEMI workshop 'Promoting a circular economy in electronics and electronics manufacturing', to which experts from leading organizations contributed with short presentations. Grace O'Malley, Vice President of Technical & Project Operations at iNEMI, introduced the iNEMI organization and its goals and activities. Tom Okrasinski, Senior Manager Product Environmental Engineering at Nokia Bell Labs, then listed the challenges associated with sustainability, such as the circular economy and the necessary basis for this, such as harmonized (material) standards and design criteria. Julio Vargas, Global Battery Program Manager at IBM, explained what innovators are doing in eco-design and called for the joint task of developing a list of best practices. He also listed the existing ecodesign standards from the EU and other organizations, including IBM. Starting with the problem of reusing or recycling components of an old product, Juan Domingez, Supply Chain Engineer at Intel, provided information on the possibilities of an extended reliability assessment for electronic components. This is because they can be more reliable than an assessment based on the usual standards. Qualification for extended use (longer use) and a reliability assessment of used parts could increase the (total) service life/usage time. However, there is no standard (process) for this. How this could be realized was discussed in conclusion.
Much more can and must be done
The 'Electronics Goes Green' conference is considered a trend barometer every four years. In 2008, for example, the focus was on the latest legal requirements of the European Union - directives aimed at reducing the environmental impact of the manufacture, use and recycling of electronic devices. In 2012, the focus was on legal compliance and energy efficiency. The fifth Electronics Goes Green 2016 focused increasingly on repair and high-quality recycling (circular economy), as electronic products should remain in active use for as long as possible before material recycling.
Dr. Nils F. Nissen, Fraunhofer IZM and Technical Chair of Electronics Goes Green 2020, draws the following conclusion for this year: "Green electronics can be integrated much more strongly into company processes and, above all, it can and must become more sustainable more quickly across the board. Circularity, resource efficiency and digitalization are the approaches to making relevant contributions to climate neutrality. And even if leading companies like Apple become climate-neutral for the entire life cycle of their devices by 2030, there is still a lot to be done to make electronics truly green."
