Consumption-Weighted Life Cycle Assessment of a Consumer Electronic Product Community
Abstract
A new approach for quantifying the net environmental impact of a "community" of interrelated products is demonstrated for consumer electronics owned by an average U.S. household over a 15-year period (1992-2007). This consumption-weighted life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology accounts for both product consumption (number of products per household) and impact (cumulative energy demand (MJ) and greenhouse gas emissions (MT CO2 eq) per product), analyzed using a hybrid LCA framework. Despite efficiency improvements in individual devices from 1992 to 2007, the net impact of the entire product community increased, due primarily to increasing ownership and usage. The net energy impact for the product community is significant, nearly 30% of the average gasoline use in a U.S. passenger vehicle in 2007. The analysis points to a large contribution by legacy products (cathode ray tube televisions and desktop computers), due to historically high consumption rates, although impacts are beginning to shift to smaller mobile devices. This method is also applied to evaluate prospective intervention strategies, indicating that environmental impact can be reduced by strategies such as lifespan extension or energy efficiency, but only when applied to all products owned, or by transforming consumption trends toward fewer, highly multifunctional products.
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Integration of functions into smart-phones and other multi-use devices can contribute to reducing the number of devices owned by an individual and thus reduce the material and energy demand caused by the production and operation of EEE.
“It has, however, been observed that the integration of functions into smart-phones and other multi-use devices can contribute to reducing the number of devices owned by an individual and thus reduce the material and energy demand caused by the production (and operation) of EEE [17,194].”
From Material efficiency strategies to reducing greenhouse gas emissions associated with buildings, vehicles, and electronics—a review (2019) · cites this paper as [17]
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- Authors
- Ryen, E. G., Babbitt, C. W., & Williams, E.
- Affiliations
- Rochester Institute of Technology (US)
- Corresponding author
- Babbitt, Callie W.
- Venue
- Environmental Science & Technology
- Publisher
- American Chemical Society (ACS)
- Published
- 2015-02-05
- Volume
- 49
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 2549-2559
- ISSN
- 0013-936X (ISSN-L)
- 1520-5851
- OpenAlex
- W2319518054
- Cited by
- 48
- References
- 39
- Citations by year
- 2026: 4 · 2025: 2 · 2024: 5 · 2023: 1 · 2022: 7 · 2021: 5 · 2020: 6 · 2019: 5 · 2018: 3 · 2017: 5 · 2016: 5
- FWCI
- 3.12
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Environmental Science & Technology (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- Golisano Institute for Sustainability, Rochester Institute of Technology
- Division of Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental, and Transport Systems (1236447)
- U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (FP -91736401-1)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Environmental Engineering › Environmental Impact and Sustainability
- Physical Sciences › Engineering › Electrical and Electronic Engineering › Green IT and Sustainability
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Environmental Engineering › Sustainability and Ecological Systems Analysis
- Keywords
- consumer electronics, cumulative energy demand, greenhouse gas emissions, desktop computers, mobile devices, energy efficiency, lifespan extension, multifunctional products
- MeSH terms
- Environment, United States, Electrical Equipment and Supplies
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