Development of a Qualitative Tool for Sustainability Assessment and Application of the Tool to Benchmark Electronic Smart Labels

Abstract

This paper presents a sustainability benchmarking tool, the GreenTool, to compare different electronic product concepts, specifically printed ones, with each other from the sustainability perspective. The purpose is to increase awareness of different aspects of sustainability and support the design of more sustainable electronics. This tool is built on European and global sustainability regulations and recommendations, and it considers environmental, economic, and social sustainability aspects in seven different criteria, each with several sub-criteria that are the actual categories used in the comparison. The tool uses scientific and industrial information as input, as well as a technical understanding of the new and baseline concepts to be compared to properly support sustainability benchmarking. In this paper, we further present an example comparison of four smart label product concepts, one of which is the commercial baseline concept, and the other three are developmental concepts. The biggest differences among the product concepts were found in the categories of ‘raw materials’, ‘manufacturing’, and ‘logistics’ criteria, where the developmental concepts based on manufacturing by printing and bio-based materials gave environmental benefits over the baseline. In the other criteria, the differences were smaller, but the developmental concepts also provided slight improvements in sustainability. The GreenTool can be considered suitable for qualitative sustainability comparisons in product concept design.