Opportunities for reducing the supply chain water footprint of metals used in consumer electronics
Opportunities for reducing the supply chain water footprint of metals used in consumer electronics
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DOI：
10.1016/j.resconrec.2021.105926
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发表时间：
2021-10-01
影响因子：
13.2
通讯作者：
Ryen, Erinn G.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Madaka, Hema;Babbitt, Callie W.;Ryen, Erinn G.
消费电子产品包含广泛的材料，这些材料的生产需要水，并可能将污染物排放到供水中，加剧淡水短缺和污染。这些对水的影响还没有得到充分的研究，因为许多关于消费电子产品的文献都集中在供应链能源或碳足迹上。这项研究评估了与提取和生产电子产品中常见的贱金属、贵金属、危险金属和关键金属相关的生命周期用水量和降解影响。对单个金属以及智能手机和笔记本电脑的代表性材料概况的水影响进行了分析，以确定未来改进的“热点”。结果表明，在单个材料层面上，贵金属的影响最大，这是因为采矿作业直接消耗的水和间接用于能源生产的水，以及尾矿管理过程中金属排放造成的水退化。在产品层面，贵金属对每部智能手机的贡献率也最高，而铝对每台笔记本电脑的贡献率更高，约占总缺水足迹的40%。另一方面，对于水质影响，贵金属对这两种产品的贡献最大。评估方案以评估与产品设计更改相关的改进潜力，包括替代供应链、材料替代和回收内容的使用。减少水影响的最大潜在机会是从缺水程度较低的地区采购金属(比基准缺水足迹减少19%)，并将回收含量增加到最大理论潜力(减少20%)。
Consumer electronics contain a broad spectrum of materials whose production requires water and potentially discharges contaminants into the water supply, exacerbating freshwater scarcity and pollution. These water impacts have not yet been fully studied, as much of the literature on consumer electronics focuses on supply chain energy or carbon footprint. This study evaluates life cycle water consumption and degradation impacts associated with extracting and producing base, precious, hazardous, and critical metals that are typically found in electronic products. Water impacts were analyzed for individual metals and for the representative material profile of smartphones and laptop computers to identify "hotspots" for future improvement. Results indicate that, at the level of individual materials, precious metals have the highest impacts, due to water consumed directly for mining operations and indirectly for energy production, and water degradation attributed to metal emissions during mine tailings management. At the product level, precious metals also have the highest contribution per smartphone, whereas aluminum has a higher contribution per laptop, accounting for about 40% of the total water scarcity footprint. On the other hand, for water quality impacts, precious metals are responsible for the highest contributions for both products. Scenarios are evaluated to assess improvement potential associated with product design changes, including alternate supply chains, material substitution, and use of recycled content. The greatest potential opportunities for reducing water impacts were sourcing metals from lower water scarcity regions (19% reduction over the baseline water scarcity footprint) and increasing recycled content to the maximum theoretical potential (20% reduction).