The International Electronics Manufacturing Initiative (iNEMI) is organizing a summit on September 22 to 23 to focus the attention of the electronics supply chain on the challenges of creating a more sustainable industry. The goal of this summit, which will be held at Motorola in Schaumburg, Ill., is to define specific actions for the electronics industry and to organize programs to execute these actions. For more information, visit www.inemi.org/cms/calendar/Sustainability_Summit_Sept08.html.

In the following Q&A, Jim McElroy, chief executive officer of iNEMI, addresses some of the issues that will be raised at the conference and describes what the association hopes to achieve during this forum.

What is “a more sustainable industry” and what are the challenges of creating it?

When we talk about sustainability we are referring to our ability as an industry to use our planet’s resources wisely so that future generations can live their lives and enjoy the benefits of our products without concern for degrading the environment and/or depleting critical materials. While perfection may never be achieved (i.e., zero impact on natural resources and the environment), the concept of sustainability gives us a way to think about how we operate and what we can do to minimize the environmental impact. The challenges we face are significant and go way beyond the boundaries that we traditionally think about in our industry. We can think about the challenges in five major areas:

Alternative Materials: While many regulations are proliferating in this area, full understanding and impact of chosen alternatives is still a major challenge, and some have argued that the impact to the environment can be negative in some cases (i.e., the chosen alternative may be less friendly to the environment after taking all lifecycle factors into account). These changes can be difficult to make both in terms of complete understanding of the environmental impact as well as the effect on cost, performance, and reliability of the product.

Energy: Moore’s Law is our friend when it comes to reducing the energy consumed for a given circuit function, but total power consumption of electronics is rising as we proliferate electronics in our daily lives. Finding ways to reduce energy usage can have a major impact. There is also a lot of promising work going on in the area of alternative energy, which can both impact the products that we manufacture and can improve environmental performance through creative use of electronic functions.

Design for Environment: As with many other outcomes, the design phase of the product lifecycle represents the best opportunity to improve environmental performance because this is the time when the most impactful tradeoffs are made in terms of materials used, power consumed, and end-of-life disposition. Yet we have a relatively weak design infrastructure to make these decisions.

Reuse, Recycling, and End of Life: Today we are seeing an explosion of regulations that deal with recycling, but the challenges remaining are significant. Major cooperative efforts are beginning to emerge and the concept of reverse logistics can be helpful to constructing the required infrastructure. Worldwide harmonization of regulatory requirements is a nightmare.

Electronics As a Solution: iNEMI’s environmental roadmapping group has chosen to focus on electronics as a solution to climate change (or “empowering people to live a sustainable lifestyle”). While there is the responsibility to minimize the electronics industry’s environmental impact from operations, products, and services, the compelling news is that the electronics industry has a particular opportunity to make society function more efficiently and easily and thereby mitigate our impact on the environment. Several potential synergies exist between different electronics applications, which provide opportunities to create virtual cycles, or low carbon feedback, and achieve transformative change. To harvest this potential, the iNEMI roadmapping team has identified a number of electronics-enabled solutions that offer the collective potential of reducing greenhouse gas emission by a billion tons.

You talk about the industry taking a proactive approach to environmental issues. Why do you think this is important?

Over the last 10 years, the industry has prepared for and implemented products that are compliant to regulations such as EU RoHS. We were, for the most part, reacting to what was being imposed. As a result, we were not able to optimize the response across the supply chain. These changes are not trivial to make and their orchestration across a very distributed supply base is extremely complex. The more that industry can prepare for likely future regulations, the better we will be positioned to provide science-based solutions that truly improve the environmental performance. This preparation can also provide input into future regulations so that the unintended consequences impact is reduced.

What do you see as the biggest obstacle to sustainability in the electronics industry? What are some of the key issues that need to be overcome or managed better?

As mentioned previously, the infrastructure of our industry is more dispersed than ever before in the age of electronics. Systematic change—which is what is required—is hampered by the fact that major segments of the industry work on very thin margins with precious little capital to invest, making collaborative efforts, such as those conducted by iNEMI, crucial for success.

Secondly, while the concept of sustainability may be relatively easy to grasp at its highest level, we have no widely accepted definitions of sustainability metrics that would help us to both prioritize the challenges before us and then measure our progress. Creating a more sustainable electronics industry goes way beyond the traditional boundaries of the infrastructure. In the end, however, we need to focus on those areas where we can have an impact and demonstrate improvements.

What do you realistically expect to achieve from this summit?

With such a major undertaking, it is unrealistic to expect a complete strategy to emerge from this two-day event. We do expect, however, to meet the following goals:

1. Identify and prioritize some of the key gaps that exist in our ability to become a more sustainable industry;
2. Identify and prioritize some of the major actions that industry could undertake to improve our environmental performance; and
3. Understand the willingness of companies to work together in a collaborative fashion to invest in projects and programs that will reduce or close the gaps.
   

There are many venues today covering the subject of sustainability. Given the limited resources available to firms, why should people attend this particular session?

Many of the sessions that are out there are primarily tutorial in nature. So those who just want to get educated about sustainability can certainly get that from a variety of sources. iNEMI events (such as the Sustainability Summit) are unique in two key respects: first, we take a systems view of the electronics industry supply chain so that tradeoffs can be made in a balanced way; second, we go beyond the educational aspect of the topic and spend considerable time strategizing what actions should be taken by the industry to begin to address the needs in a planned, collaborative fashion. Those who attend our session can help to shape the response from the industry in this important endeavor and we welcome their constructive participation.