| Product Assessment | Home Appliances Recycling Process |
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| Product Assessment | Home Appliances Recycling Process |
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Electric home appliances that have various functions are produced with
the development of science and technology, leading to widespread use around
the world more and more every year for civilized life.
However, the increase of products also becomes a cause of increase of
environmental impacts to earth, so the environmentally conscious design
is getting necessary for product development. When we think about the lifecycle
of product, there are a lot of impacts on environment such as utilization
of limited earth resource, consumption of energy etc. at production and
use, treatment after use, so the manufacturers have to consider "from
the cradle to the cradle" of products that is "from the resource
to the use of recycled materials" for manufacturing products. For
this, the manufacturer or designer have to evaluate the environmental impacts
of product according to the plan as organization when developing products
and implement the product assessment (assessment in advance) setting up
the improvement goal.
The Association for Electric Home Appliances (AEHA) configured with electric
home appliances manufacturers has recognized the importance of design for
which environment was considered for 15 years or more, and issued "Product
Assessment Manual for Electric Home Appliances in Japan" in October
1991 ahead of other industries. Then accompanied by the active legislation
on products in the late 90s, the content of assessment was reviewed and
the 3rd edition was issued in March 2001.
When we refer to overseas, the legislations relevant to environment of products have been progressing in Europe, U.S. and China as well. Especially, as for the chemical substances, the use of specific chemical substances (6 substances) became prohibited or restricted by the EU RoHS directive since July 1, 2006. In Japan, revised "Law for Promotion of Effective Utilization of Resources" since July 1, 2006 obligates the marking of these 6 chemical substances. In China, the legislation relevant to RoHS was taken effect on March 1, 2007. In addition, EuP (Energy-using Products) directive which considers lifecycle of products including resources and mainly energy use was issued in July 2005, and it is currently being prepared for implementing measures as a standard.
Considering these global trends of legislations, IEC (International Electrotechnical
Commission) has started to develop an environmental international standard
relevant to products.
The 4th edition of “Product Assessment Manual for Electric Home Appliances
in Japan” was issued in May 2006, and it included the wide results of research
activities through product assessment committees and working groups of
AEHA, international and domestic progress on necessary information regarding
environmentally conscious design.
AEHA's Product Assessment Manual (Executive Summary version of the 4th edition in January 2007) can be downloaded from here.
Contents
1. Purpose of product assessment and this manual
2. Using method
3. Organization / structure
4. Evaluation method
5. Product assessment guideline (check list)
6. Design guideline for marking and labeling
6-1. Identification coding system of plastic parts
6-2. Recycling symbols for ease of manual dismantling and separating operations
6-3. The marking for presence of the specific chemical substances for electrical and electronic equipment
6-4. Presence and absence of the specific chemical substances in mounted boards
6-5. Labeling of equipment in which compact rechargeable battery is used
6-6. Container packaging identification labeling of electric home appliances
7. References
7-1. Activity of product assessment of electric home appliances industry in Japan
7-2. Relation between the Japanese legislation and product assessment manual
7-3. Relationship with international standard and specification
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