Life cycle assessment of a telecommunication product

Environmental awareness in industry is not longer focused on technological and economical aspects alone, and ecology is becoming a factor of growing importance at all stages of a product life cycle. To understand the ecological weak points in a life cycle of a product and to compare solutions to ensure the improvements in each stage of the life cycle a systematic method is needed to quantify all environmental impacts. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) performs the capability to quantify the environmental performance of a product. The output of LCAs, the ecoprofiles serve as a starting point for product and process improvements through scenario and weak point analysis. This paper shows the application of LCA to a telecommunication product (pager). In section one the methodology of LCA and some product information are shown. In section two details of the LCA project and findings are described. In the conclusion an outlook is given on the most important needs to improve LCAs in electronics applications.