State of the Art of Components Reuse
This is why there is an increasing concern about the volume of end of life electronics, and the fact that much of it is consigned to landfill.The limited availability of landfill and the need to adopt a more sustainable approach to materials consumption has led to greater attention being given to the problems associated with end of life components.
Printed circuit board (PCB) is the typical and fundamental component for almost all electronic products. With the development of electronic products, the amount of waste PCBs is increasing sharply and has caused severe environmental problems.
The most environmentally sound management of solid waste is achieved when approaches are implemented according to the preferred order of European Union’s waste treatment laws: waste prevention first, recycling second and disposal last. Reuse is the environmentally preferable option for managing older electronic equipment. The main benefits of reuse are:
Diverts materials from disposal: electronics reuse and recycling save bulky equipment from landfills and incinerators.
However, currently electronic components reuse from PCBs has some difficulties to be accepted due to:
1. Reused components have bad image in market mainly because of uncertainly in their life span and reliability during the second use time.
2. High recovery cost
3. Lack of collection systems that guarantee constant supply
4. Quite often product design does not allow easy disassembly of discrete electronic components.
5. Lack of simple and effective disassembly processes for small or medium recycling industry.
6. Absence of accepted quality standards for recovered components.
7. Reticence of electronic industry to accept reused components in new products for technical and quality reasons. Reused components must fulfill the same requirements as new ones and also fit into standard manufacturing processes.
Until recently, the absence of established markets for recovered components was felt but peribanu.com and others joined the full landfill promising to clean it by reselling those EOL components.
In a case study done by peribanu.com on several clients based in the hardware and telecommunications industries.
It was found that although the cost for maintenance for inventory rose by 18%, including quality assurance costs. The number of faulty products went to minimum at each of these companies.
Moreover, with current market instability excess inventory is getting to a maximum of 13% at US manufacturers. Indicating that the opportunity to resell these electronic components might become a channel for a return on purchasing costs. Organization that was able to allocate the minimal resources to deal with the resell. Along with Peribanu eBay like platform were able tosave up to 8% of all purchasing costs.
Especially with hard to find component allocations some the excess inventory was found to be another manufacturer’s goldmine. On top of that, with product lifespan taken into consideration and client satisfaction reaching top assuring client reconstructing with the manufacturer.
With UN regulatory rules watching world transports of e-waste, the Far East, formerly known as the world dump for e-waste of all sorts is developing 2 new industries: electronic disassembly and electronic component quality assurance in so they can take these components and resell them as being of trusted source.
Finally, with businesses seeing their end of the tunnel in green colors in environmental aspect as well as the bottom line dollars color there is a chance the future is to be bright and cleaner.
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