Recycling telephone housings into wall mounts for the MERLIN LEGEND and PARTNER II communications systems

Resource conservation is among the major goals of life cycle design. One way to achieve resource conservation is by means of using recycled materials in the manufacture of products. Of course, recycling may also make sense from a purely economic perspective. In this paper an AT&T internal recycling project is discussed in which 100% post-consumer ABS (acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene) plastic flake derived from scrapped telephone housings is used for making wall mount panels for the MERLIN LEGEND and PARTNER II business telephone systems. Issues pertinent to the use of recycled plastic, such as the material´s suitability in view of its somewhat degraded physical properties, and the implications of applicable product standards and regulations, are reviewed as well