Electronics designers find it's not easy being green

The Seattle Times: Business & Technology: Electronics designers find it's not easy being green: "At the heart of these regulations is an economic notion stating that the best way to deal with pollution is to build its cost into the product. If companies must pay to dispose of their own products, they would have an incentive to design their products to be easier to recycle or more environmentally friendly and, thus, less costly to clean up. [...]

"Manufacturers expect tighter regulations to become the norm in some of their biggest markets. So they're changing the design process.

At Panasonic, designers conduct a 40-step review that, among other things, looks at the ability to recycle materials used in their prototypes, and how quickly products can be taken apart for recycling.

Because plastics are more difficult to recycle, designers are encouraged to use metals.

'Markets for recycled metals are much more advanced than for plastics,' Matsushita's Thompson said.

Designers also try to reduce the number of parts or materials used in a single product, making it simpler to sort and recycle. [...]"