Electronics Goes Green 2008+. Merging Technology and Sustainable Development. Proceedings

What drives technological development? Technology! It was just published that the peak oil - the maximum of possible oil production - was already passed in 2006. At the same time, the global oil demand increases, as well as the world's population. Climate change already happens ever more obvious. Must we accept limits in a world aspiring permanent growth? But isn't it the limitation that gives sense and drive to efficiency? With equal limits of carbon dioxide emissions per person on this planet, for example, higher efficiency can buy more of what we think to need for a comfortable life within this limit. It will require all our social and technological abilities to master these global challenges. Merging technological and sustainable development hence is a way. We need technological development for sustainable development, not technological development that ends in itself. We must strive for the most efficient and the least toxic. The more functional must have priority over just more functionalities. The focus of the Electronics Goes Green 2008+ Conference was on how the electronics industry can contribute to the required changes, and what and how it has to change itself. Environmental legislation, higher energy and resource efficiency, reuse and optimized end-of-life, and managerial aspects of sustainability were the key topics discussed at the conference between representatives of industry, politics and science.