Improving recyclability by design: a case study of fibre optic cable

Producer responsibility and take-back legislation in Europe place responsibility on the manufactures for the recovery and recycling of end-of-life products. This will inevitably require the manufacturers to rethink the way products are designed and manufactured in order to improve their recyclability. This paper illustrates on the case of a fibre optic cable how this can be achieved in a practical and relatively easy way, leading to both environmental and economic benefits. The case study compares the current design the 96 fibre optic cable with several proposed design modifications with the aim of identifying the design option that would enable an easy end-of-life disassembly and recycling of component materials. The designs are evaluated on a life cycle basis for both economic and environmental impacts using the CHAin management of Materials and Products (CHAMP) methodology. CHAMP combines elements of process and design engineering with life cycle approaches to enable the user to explore technical, economic and environmental consequences of different material, process and technological options, including material recovery and recycling. CHAMP is therefore particularly well suited for addressing the requirements of the take-back and producer responsibility legislation. The results of LCA and life cycle costing obtained by using CHAMP show that cable re-design can reduce the environmental impacts by between 30 and 60% and can lead to a 40% reduction in economic costs. This is achieved by changing the internal structure of the cable, by removing some of the cable components (e.g. aluminium and organic gels) and by recycling some of the materials. Transport (including reverse logistics), processing and landfill also contribute to the overall impacts, but their contribution is less significant than that from the materials used to manufacture the cable. (c) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.