Life cycle assessment (LCA) of circular consumer electronics based on IC recycling and emerging PCB assembly materials

As consumer microelectronics become ever more ubiquitous, there are growing concerns about their environmental impact. However, the diversity of designs and components used in modern devices makes a coherent mitigation strategy hard to formulate. In this work, we perform a quantitative life cycle assessment (LCA) of the environmental profiles of both high-value (a smartwatch) and low-value (a TV remote) devices and find that the optimal mitigation strategy varies substantially between these two extremes. We find that the impact of the smartwatch is dominated by the production costs of its integrated circuits (ICs), and so a priority on device lifetime and design-for-recycling of the ICs is the best path to minimizing impact. On the other hand, the TV remote's impact is dominated by the cost of its fiberglass (FR4) substrate, with the much simpler ICs playing a much smaller role. Our results show that the impact of low-cost devices is best mitigated by incorporating eco-friendly substrates and additive manufacturing techniques, while also minimizing the use of critical raw materials (CRMs). These results will help guide future industrial strategies, and we provide a list of challenges and opportunities in making electronics green.