CARE "VISION 2000"-the environmental research platform of the electronics industry in Europe

CARE "VISION 2000" (CARE= Comprehensive Approach for the Recycling of Electronics) developed rapidly from a single project to the environmental research platform of the electronics industry in Europe with 125 participants and 17 different projects covering the range from technical subjects like ecodesign, recycling technologies, disassembly over logistics issues like take-back, reverse logistics and economics and marketing topics like life cycle costing, consumer behavior on second-hand markets ending with workplace and training issues for recycling workers. All these issues are described in the paper. Moreover, the authors describe in detail how this research platform tackles the questions of applicability and problems of future challenges due to new forthcoming product concepts.