The Study of Designing for Environment on Liquid Crystal Display

The flat panel display industry in Taiwan recently has reached a numerous export value with tens of billion US dollars. It is also a core industry for Taiwan. However, the recent environmental protection strategy and directives developed in Europe, US, and Japan have been gradually shifting from the end of pipe mindset to a more impacts preventive approach from the product designing phase, which was perceived as a new trade barrier that could have significant negative impacts on Taiwan industries. Thus, this paper categorizes the international environmental standards, relative regulations and proposes some strategies of DfE for LCD products in Taiwan. This paper also presented successful cases of DfE application in LCD Monitor, indicated significant benefits could be obtained. For this case, costs reduction around $65,000 US dollars in materials and 2,500 hours saving in labor was achieved every year, and the pollutants emission was also mitigated with rate around 20-30% estimated. By using saving energy, low toxicity, and recycling concept into development of LCD products, it would improve these products to comply with requirements from international regulations