Life Cycle Assessment of Electronics

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a methodology for assessing the environmental aspects and potential impacts throughout a product's life cycle from raw materials and energy extraction, components manufacture, assembly, distribution and sale, use and final end-of-life treatment such as disposal, recycling and energy recovery (i.e. cradle-to-grave). The environmental and resource impacts include climate change, stratospheric ozone depletion, toxicological stress on human health and ecosystems, the depletion of resources, water use and many others. This paper presents and discusses cases where LCA is used for assessing the environmental impact of electronics products and processes. Included are consumer electronics products, interconnect technology in electronics micro-integration, photovoltaic (PV) solar cells, and electric vehicles.