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Green is definitely colour of the year for personal computers in the
US. Manufacturers are rushing to market their ‘green’ products and to show
off their credentials in every possible way. Some green PCs come in unbleached
packaging printed with soya-based ink. Others are built from recycled plastic,
and most are produced without ozone-depleting CFCs. But what these models
have in common is that they save energy. The Energy Star logo, introduced
in June by the US Environmental Protection Agency, identifies PCs and monitors
which consume no more than 30 watts each, compared with over 100 watts for
an average PC and monitor, when they are not being used. The EPA believes
big energy savings can be made from PCs that switch themselves off when
not in use. Estimates suggest that the 30 to 35 million PCs in the US are
used for only a fraction of the time they are on. They further suggest that
up to 40 per cent of machines are left on overnight and at weekends, and
there are few signs that users are about to change their behaviour.

Energy-saving PCs are expected to make a quick impact: built using current
technology, they will cut power bills and significantly reduce emissions
of carbon dioxide from power stations. But the real challenge for PC manufacturers
is to control the computer’s environmental impact from cradle to grave.
That means an attack on polluting and wasteful manufacturing methods, and
the creation of an industry that reprocesses old PCs and feeds the parts
and materials into new models or other products.

Unfortunately, a PC is a recycler’s nightmare: an intimate blend of
metals, glass, and plastics of several kinds. None of these materials is
particularly valuable, so there is little economic incentive for reprocessing
PCs. It is cheaper to dump them, and let future generations clean up the
resulting pollution. But the cost of dumping waste in landfill sites is
expected to soar by the end of the century. Some kinds of waste, including
the lead-tin solder used in PCs and other electronics equipment, are likely
to be reclassified as hazardous and will therefore require a more costly
method of disposal.

The German parliament is already drafting a bill, that requires electronics
manufacturers to take back discarded equipment; it is expected to become
law by 1995 or 1996. Similar laws may follow throughout the European Community.
The European Commission has given Italy the task of preparing a directive
on electronics waste, which will affect manufacturers all over the world
when it comes into force.

Raising consciousness

Manufacturers in the US are already aware of the need to tackle the
PC waste legacy. Since the early 1980s pressure groups such as the Silicon
Valley Toxics Coalition have campaigned for the electronics industry to
be made accountable for the pollution it produces. And in March this year,
the Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation (MCC), a consortium
of US computer and electronics companies based in Austin, Texas, published
an unprecedented self-critical report on how to make the electronics industry
both environmentally conscious and internationally competitive.* The MCC
report highlights the industry’s liberal consumption of chemicals, energy
and water, and suggests that this could be reduced with improved technology
and better management of people and projects. It also put forward proposals
for recycling, although they came surprisingly low on its list of recommendations.

The reason why the report emphasised altering the computer manufacturing
process rather than recycling old systems is explained by the MCC’s data
on PC production. A computer contains some of the most intensively processed
materials on Earth. Its manufacture consumes quantities of chemicals, energy
and water that are out of proportion to the product’s size and weight. The
telecommunications company AT&T estimated in 1992 that approximately
700 different materials and chemicals are used in computers and electronics
equipment. Most of these do not end up in the finished product, but are
used in the manufacture of semiconductor components and printed circuit
boards. In both these processes, coatings are repeatedly applied and then
wholly or partially dissolved.

According to the MCC report, the result is that a computer makes more
waste at the beginning of its life than at the end – 60 kilograms of factory
waste for a 33-kilogram workstation, a desktop computer more complex and
expensive than a modern PC. Its manufacture also consumes surprising amounts
of energy. It is all very well for someone to buy an ‘energy-saving’ computer
and take it to a recycling centre at the end of its life, but the customer
does not see the environmental price that has already been paid before the
machine is even switched on.

If computer and semiconductor manufacturers want to save the planet,
and save themselves money at the same time, they should be investing in
reducing the amount of wastage at the manufacturing stage, argues the report.
Fabricating a silicon chip may take up to 400 steps, many of which involve
costly and hazardous chemicals such as ultra-high-purity hydrofluoric and
hydrochloric acid, arsine and phosphine. The resulting 10 grams of microscopically
patterned silicon are the end product of a process that consumes 28 kilograms
of liquid chemicals. Neutralising the acid waste requires a further 11 kilograms
of sodium hydroxide.

The MCC study estimates that it takes 33 000 litres of water to make
a workstation. Most of this water is consumed in the repeated rinsing of
printed circuit boards. Semiconductor manufacturing is also a thirsty trade,
using more than 12 000 litres for rinsing. Based on these figures, the ratio
of waste water to product for a workstation is a million to one.

The report also found that the manufacture of a workstation consumes
2315 kilowatt-hours of electricity. It makes sense to promote energy-saving
computers as the EPA has done, but if it takes £180 of electricity
(at British domestic prices) to manufacture a workstation, there is also
a strong economic and environmental case for encouraging energy-saving measures
at the factory.

But what prospects are there for reducing material waste and energy
usage in the electronics industry? According to the MCC report there already
appears to be a wide variation in the efficiency of semiconductor manufacturing
operations. Making the semiconductor devices for a workstation typically
produces 3.2 kg of hazardous waste, but some factories that have invested
in state-of-the-art equipment produce only 1.1 kg, of which 85 per cent
is recycled or used as fuel.

Before they are cut up into chips, circular wafers of silicon are processed
in a wafer fabrication plant where microscopic transistors and metallic
connections are embedded into the silicon. These plants can cost up to $600
million to equip because of the exacting demands of the chip industry. It
is vital, for example, that all stages of this process are carried out in
a dust-free environment – a single speck of dust can result in a faulty
chip – so powerful fans run constantly to force the ventilation air through
extremely fine filters. This process consumes about 60 per cent of the
electrical power used in a wafer plant.

Chip manufacturers recognise this problem, and companies such as Texas
Instruments are already working on techniques that will mean the air can
be filtered less rigorously, so reducing the need for power-hungry ventilation
equipment. In a project sponsored by the US Air Force and the US government’s
Advanced Research Projects Agency, Texas Instruments is developing vacuum
cassettes or ‘micro-environments’, which dock with the processing machines
like spacecraft. The technology is primarily intended to reduce dust contamination,
and increase the yield of usable chips. As a welcome side effect, it could
also cut the semiconductor industry’s electricity consumption.

Individual responsibility

But a cleaner, greener semiconductor industry will not be achieved by
technology alone. The authors of the MCC report argue that current attitudes
and management practices encourage inefficiency and waste. They suggest
that the manager in charge of a process should be responsible not only
for the cost of materials used, but also for the cost of disposing of the
resulting waste. The benefit of such measures has already been proven. At
one wafer plant contacted by the MCC, workers were using too much photoresist,
the light-sensitive polymer used to protect selected areas of silicon from
chemical treatments. Further quantities of the chemical were going stale
on the shelves. The investigators estimated that with better inventory
control, the plant could cut its purchases of photoresist by 40 per cent
and save $1 million a year.

There are also opportunities for greening the manufacture of printed
circuit boards, though hazardous materials can probably never be completely
eliminated because of the need to plate and etch metals. Energy might be
saved by replacing wet chemistry with dry processes, electroplating with
purely chemical ‘electroless’ plating and high-temperature processes with
lower temperature ones. For example, lamination, in which layers of multilayer
circuit boards are stuck together, could be carried out at room temperature.

CFCs were widely used to remove soldering flux from assembled boards,
but manufacturers are required to phase them out by 1995, to comply with
the Montreal Protocol. Some have switched to other solvents, including water-based
mixtures. Other companies, such as Apple Computer, have developed less messy
soldering processes and no longer bother to clean their boards.

Adjusting to change

Manufacturers are aware that they may one day have to abandon lead-based
solder; other industries, such as plumbing, have already been forced to
find an alternative to lead. And some states in the US have already banned
the disposal of printed circuit boards and computers in ordinary landfill
sites because they fear that groundwater will be polluted by lead. Solder
is a major contributor to the 60 000 to 70 000 tonnes of lead discarded
annually in consumer electronics goods in the US, according to the Environmental
Protection Agency. It is also a pollutant that could be replaced, for example,
by conductive adhesives made from metal dust and epoxy or polyamide resin.

But this will not overcome another problem – that of the lead glass
currently used in the necks and funnels of the colour cathode-ray tubes
in computer screens. This is classified as hazardous, and under new American
rules cannot be dumped in ordinary landfill sites (Technology, 4 September).
Finding an alternative way to dispose of it can be difficult because as
many as six kinds of glass are used in a colour CRT, which makes it very
difficult to separate the cone glass containing lead from the screen glass
containing barium.

Some US companies are already experimenting in this area. Digital, the
Massachusetts-based computer manufacturer, along with glass-maker Corning
Asahi Video Products and recycling specialist Envirocycle, both of Pennsylvania,
have developed a process for dismantling CRTs and recycling the glass. Digital
claims it saved $1 million in hazardous waste landfill fees in a year.
But the industry remains doubtful about recycling CRTs because the process
also involves high costs.

Plastics recycling in the PC business is more advanced. At its Cuppertino
headquarters in California, Apple is investigating the suitability of recycled
plastics. Intel, the chip manufacturer, already uses them for the cases
of its PCs, which are rebadged by other vendors. Hewlett-Packard, the computer
and instrument maker with headquarters in Palo Alto, California, found that
recycled plastic was better than new material.

Many PC makers have instituted design-for-recycling programmes, to make
their computers easier to dismantle and the plastics quicker to sort. Snap
fastenings are replacing screws. Weak points are provided in the casings
of PCs, so that recyclers can quickly rip them apart. Paints and metal badges
are being banished, and designers are reducing the number of different resins
– polycarbonate and acetal are widely used – in their products. Symbols
stamped on the inner surfaces of parts show which resins have been used.

Such measures will eventually reduce the cost of recycling PCs, and
increase the value of the materials recovered. But the strongest argument
for recycling is the mounting cost of disposing of these computers in any
other way. Manufacturers are aware that under future ‘polluter-pays’ legislation,
they may have to foot the bill for the ultimate disposal of their products.

A 1991 study by Carnegie-Mellon University in Pennsylvania predicted
that 150 million PCs and workstations will have been discarded in the US
by the year 2005. At current prices it would cost $400 million to dump
the machines in landfill sites. Increases in landfill costs could bring
the bill to $1 billion.

Buried treasures

Similar calculations made by Britain’s Centre for Exploitation of Science
and Technology estimated that six million items of electronics equipment,
containing materials worth £50 million, go to landfill sites each
year. According to CEST, the low cost of landfill in Britain (around $60
per tonne) has discouraged alternative solutions such as recycling.

A CEST report in 1991 concluded that for almost all electronics equipment,
the costs of recycling exceed the scrap value of the reclaimed material.
BT recycles telephones, but CEST calculated that the company loses 70p on
each phone. A similar calculation for PCs revealed a £7 financial
penalty for recycling. IBM and ICL recycle computers in Britain, but if
CEST is right, these operations are unlikely to be profitable.

CEST argues for a proper infrastructure for recycling in Britain to
avoid falling into the same position as Germany, where mountains of waste
have accumulated since the introduction of a law compelling shops to take
back packaging from the goods they sell. ‘Germany’s mistake,’ says Graham
Marson, chairman of the Industry Council for Electronic Equipment Recycling
(ICER), ‘was not developing the markets for recycled material before starting
to collect it.’

An ICER task force is studying infrastructure issues, such as the relative
merits of local recycling centres and ‘take-back’ to the manufacturer’s
plant. Another task force has prepared guidelines for designers who want
to make recycling more cost-effective. ‘It is never going to be profitable,’
Marson warns. Claire Snow, ICER’s director, says that in many cases ‘there
is a reluctance to use recycled material, because people do not think it
can live up to specifications.’ Marketing executives think the exact colour
of a PC’s case is important. But most customers probably choose PCs on price,
technical specification and the manufacturer’s reputation. And there is
a new breed of customer who will buy a PC in any colour, so long as it’s
green.

Tony Durham is the editor of IT Horizons, a newsletter on advanced information
technology that is published 10 times a year.

*Environmental Consciousness: A Strategic Competitiveness Issue for
the Electronics and Computer Industry published in March this year by the
Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation, Austin, Texas.

* * *

Energy-saving computers win US star of approval

The US now has an official badge for energy-efficient desktop computers,
monitors and printers, and a government committed to buying energy-saving
computer equipment. The Environmental Protection Agency launched its Energy
Star logo this spring, one year after the start of the Energy Star programme.
In April, President Clinton announced that federal agencies will have to
buy products meeting the Energy Star guidelines, if products with the required
performance are available. The order takes effect on 18 October and is expected
to save $40 million annually.

The Environmental Protection Agency says that computers use 5 per cent
of commercial power in the US, and that if nothing is done, this could rise
to 10 per cent, or 70 billion kilowatt-hours per year, by the year 2000.
By then, Energy Star and other campaigns for energy-saving computing are
expected to save 26 billion kilowatt-hours a year, eliminating the need
for 10 power stations. If those power stations were coal-fired, sulphur
dioxide emissions would be reduced by 140 000 tonnes, nitrogen oxides by
75 000 tonnes, and carbon dioxide by 20 million tonnes.

The impact on the greenhouse effect would be like taking five million
cars off the road, says the EPA. But even so, the clean computers envisaged
by the Environmental Protection Agency would still consume the output of
17 power stations in the US, contributing as much to global warming as the
emissions from 8.5 million cars. Information technology has indeed permeated
society, when the effects it has on the environment can be compared with
those of the automobile.