Towards absolute sustainability of electronics: A lifetime to compensate carbon footprint

In the current context of climate crisis, the Planetary Boundaries constitute a framework to describe the limits for the impacts of human activities on Earth. As every human sector, electronics industry must be subject to limits, and absolute environmental sustainability requirements must be incorporated in the design process. As an action, the disposal of electronic devices should be driven by the consideration of environmental constraints, and not by marketing or obsolescence aspects. This work introduces the concept of compensation lifetime, which aims to compensate the end-to-end carbon footprint of electronic components and systems. It combines a top-down perspective, taking into account an absolute target, with a bottom-up approach, changing the mindset for designing and using electronics.