Indeed, numerous environmental veins remain for the industry to mine--and compete on--to improve the environmental friendliness and performance of products. This exercise will be neither easy nor inexpensive. Still, if it's done right, we just might find ourselves achieving what Gil Friend of Natural Logic calls "regulatory insulation"--getting so far ahead of regulators we obviate the need for regulations.

Consider this: The electronics industry defines, designs and builds products based on several factors. They include our knowledge of such technical attributes as the mechanical, electrical, thermal and functional (manufacturability, quality and reliability) properties of the chemicals and systems used to manufacture our products.

We have gotten to the point where actual knowledge of the substances used in production has been rendered mostly irrelevant or self-evident. What we have generally ignored, however, are the environmental attributes of those substances and production methods, and now that ignorance has come home to roost.

So how can the industry look at this as an opportunity? We compete on the attributes mentioned above, but a whole new set of factors has emerged at the environmental level. The environmental attributes of products and parts that are targeted by ELV, RoHS, WEEE, Reach and energy-based initiatives like EuP generally fall into three major buckets:

• material type and amount;

• energy use during the product life cycle, primarily in the manufacturing and usage phases;

• waste minimization throughout the product life cycle.

1. Material type and amount assessments consider how much material is used and of what type. The type assessment examines environmental attributes like toxicity and ecotoxicity, which can be broken out into at least a dozen properties that can then be compared for optimal environmental impact. Bobbie Lippiatt of the National Institute of Standards and Technology has developed a tool focused primarily on the construction industry, BEESiv, that enables comparison of these attributes against standard and custom guidelines.

2. Energy use, in the broadest possible sense, considers the energy used in manufacturing products from the point of extraction of raw materials through refinement and manufacturing and transport to its final destination. EuP-related research shows this can be as much as 25 percent of the total energy used by products like televisions or computers throughout their entire life cycle, offset by what is recovered during incineration.

Recycled material has a lower energy value than the equivalent virgin material, since some level of refinement (and transport) is the only common energy use scenario.

3. Waste minimization is addressed by WEEE, but it has to be considered in product development and manufacturing, and by industry standards bodies. The notebook computer I'm using to type this is effectively unable to be upgraded (aside from the battery and maybe the DRAM) by the typical consumer. But imagine if customers could order a modular CPU, disk drive or screen upgrade for a notebook and install it themselves. Imagine if we could shrink the 19-inch rack-mount form factor and eliminate wasted space--and materials--in the data center.

We must grapple with such issues, as companies and as an industry, and in a few cases we can work closely with other industries to share the costs and expertise of integrating these new attributes successfully into our processes.

--By Michael Kirschner

Design Chain Associates LLC (www.designchainassociates.com).

To learn more, visit: www.greenpeace.org/greenerelectronics;www.natlogic.com