Challenging the Future: Ways Towards Sustainable Green Electronics

Microelectronics, on the surface, appears as a clean high-technology industry, which creates benefits for mankind. It is estimated that the worldwide sales of electronic products in 1998 were over 1 trillion US dollars. The electronics industry is therefore perceived as a very successful industry. This success, however, takes the electronics industry to the environmental limits: the increased electronic devices require increased resources and the growing amounts of emissions and waste from electronic devices burden the environment.