A Model for Gaining Significant Data to Establish Energy Profiles of Passive Electronic Components

Life Cycle Thinking gains importance in the electronics industry currently, fostered by the debate on global warming and the development of a European ecodesign legislation setting mandatory environmental performance standards. Complexity of the supply chain used to produce electric and electronic equipment does not allow a systematic evaluation like LCA in a broad manner. In this context it will become important to provide relevant information on the material composition and the consumption of energy, materials and/or resources of the components or sub-assemblies. It is not clear yet for individual product categories, how such information requirements might look like. The consequence could be a multitude of OEM individual requests regarding the environmental profile for passive electronic components, as it is the way today with respect to the manifold of individual approaches within the material information process. To avoid a heavily bureaucratic and non-transparent practice, the German passive electronics components industry intends to develop a harmonized model for such component data.