Finding Sustainability in Additive Processes

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When you hear about sustainability, odds are that electronics don’t come to mind. The manufacturing process alone is riddled with processes that generate large amounts of waste and utilize volatile chemicals and compounds. Consumers dispose of their personal electronic devices, which, added to the waste from the manufacturing process, accumulates into quite a large sum. According to a report from the UN environment program, the world produces approximately 50 million tons of electronic and electrical waste (e-waste) a year.

This e-waste is filled with toxic components—such as mercury—that are involved in electronic processes and are often not disposed of properly. The same report highlighted that only 20% of e-waste is being formally recycled each year; the remainder most likely ends up in a landfill or is improperly recycled. Over time, this can have a large impact on environmental surroundings.

What’s Being Done
Recently, sustainability has been a hot topic, not only in terms of electronics, but across the broader technology industry. At CES 2023, for example, sustainability was one of its key pillars2 and the topic of consideration in three panel discussions. The entire electronics community is trying to come together to ring in a new era of sustainable electronics.

To begin working toward a more sustainable workplace, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) developed the ISO 14000 family of documents3 around environmental management. Last updated in 2021, the 14001 standard establishes an environmental management system built to contribute toward sustainability.

Yet, even as these standards are developed and conversations are happening across the electronics community, actionable change is slow to come. Electronics manufacturing, for example, contributed 5.9 million metric tons (MMT) of carbon dioxide equivalent to greenhouse gas emissions in 2020 alone4. This casts a spotlight on the unsustainable methodologies currently involved in the electronics industry and begs the question, “Is it possible to be sustainable within electronics manufacturing?”

Find out the answer to this question in the rest of the article which appeared in the June issue of SMT007 Magazine.