Balancing design strategies and end-of-life processing

The QWERTY/EE concept developed at the TU Delft is applied to balance design strategies with end-of-life treatment processes. Based on this concept, the following approach is used for four different redesign cases of consumer electronic products: 1. Assessing the impact of three general design strategies for improving end-of-life performance: reducing parts and materials that are environmentally burdening in end-of-life, reallocating materials or components and improving connections between various parts. 2. Redesign priorities are determined by QWERTY/EE analysis showing which materials and components to focus on in particular. 3. Determining the feasibility of redesign options based on the technical and economical consequences of changes in the current product design. 4. Evaluation of the actual redesign in order to check whether or not an environmental improvement is realized. The results of this approach show the value of the QWERTY/EE concept for design for end-of-life activities. The actual redesign results show that despite the very limited degree a designer has for improving end-of-life aspects from an environmental perspective, still significant improvements can be realized in certain cases and not only from an environmental perspective but also in costs.