Incorporating Sustainability in Electronics Design: Obstacles and Opportunities

TL;DR

The paper investigates how life cycle assessment data are collected and applied in ICT product design, revealing that data collection is labor-intensive and decision making is highly distributed across stakeholders. Through 17 semi-structured interviews with LCA practitioners and engineers, it identifies key barriers including data gaps, supplier coordination, IP concerns, and unclear standards, and argues that CHI research can create tools that integrate LCA into early design stages. The authors outline opportunities for data acquisition, methodology consistency, and enhanced communication, and propose Sustainability-First design and multi-stage LCA representations to enable EI reductions without waiting for full LCAs. The work highlights the practical impact of better interfaces, collaboration, and visualization in accelerating sustainable electronics, with implications for policy, industry practice, and future HCI research.

Abstract

Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a methodology for holistically measuring the environmental impact of a product from initial manufacturing to end-of-life disposal. However, the extent to which LCA informs the design of computing devices remains unclear. To understand how this information is collected and applied, we interviewed 17 industry professionals with experience in LCA or electronics design, systematically coded the interviews, and investigated common themes. These themes highlight the challenge of LCA data collection and reveal distributed decision-making processes where responsibility for sustainable design choices, and their associated costs, is often ambiguous. Our analysis identifies opportunities for HCI technologies to support LCA computation and its integration into the design process to facilitate sustainability-oriented decision-making. While this work provides a nuanced discussion about sustainable design in the information and communication technologies (ICT) hardware industry, we hope our insights will also be valuable to other sectors.

Figures (5)

• Figure 1: LCA data collection. LCA practitioners require input from many product stakeholders to collect the data needed to accurately model EI. Without being part of the initial design process, they often must retrace the steps it took to arrive at the final product assembly.
• Figure 2: Smartphone BOM. (A) An excerpt from the manufacturing BOM for the Fairphone 4, which lists over 300 unique components. (B) An exploded view of the Fairphone 4 assembly shcherban_fairphone_2023. (C) Materials information for recyclers compiled and collected through the LCA data gathering process. Both A and C are from the manufacturer-provided repair and recycling information document for the Fairphone 4 fairphoneRepair.
• Figure 3: User interface of industry-standard LCA software. (A) Screenshot of SimaPro LCA software from simapro-screenshot. (B) Screenshot of Sphera (GaBi) LCA software from gabi-screenshot. We note that while these examples do not model electronics products, they are representative of each tool's user interface.
• Figure 4: LCA integration with product development. (Top) In the current product development process, LCA data is collection begins after the final BOM is completed. This means products have already reached the market by the time the LCA report is available. (Bottom) In our envisioned product development process, LCA data collection and computation are carried out in parallel to all design stages in an integrated fashion. The preliminary LCA results can now be used to inform decision-making.
• Figure 5: Mapping obstacles to opportunities.Here, we tie opportunities for innovation to obstacles identified through our interviews with LCA professionals and engineers. Better LCA reporting could provide support for external factors such as policies and consumer awareness of sustainability, which may in turn motivate efforts in EI reduction using LCAs.