Reducing Environmental Impacts

Reducing Environmental Impacts on Products at the Planning and Design Stages
The LCP is used to devise concepts regarding environmentally conscious products or ECPs at the planning stage. The ECP development system is structured and focuses on the 3R conscious design, energy-saving design and design for reducing environmental impact substances.

Life Cycle Planning or LCP

LCP is a technique for formulating a concept of ECP at the planning stage, which satisfies the quality and cost requirements, while at the same time decisively reducing environmental impacts throughout the life cycle. Effective utilization of data obtained by Life Cycle Assessment or LCA and Quality Function Development or QFD contributes to the determination of environmental specifications, taking the product life cycle into consideration, and identification of ideas for improving upgradeability, maintainability, reusability and recyclability at the parts level.
TOSHIBA TEC Corporation has further advanced the LCP method in the planning of an environmentally conscious vacuum cleaner, and applied the LCP method to POS terminals. The POS terminal M-7000 has been optimized while being comprised from the 3R (Reduce, Reuse and Recycle) points of view based on LCP analytical results.

Example of the Environmentally Conscious Design Concept formulated by LCP (POS Terminal M-7000)

* Example of the Environmentally Conscious Design Concept formulated by LCP (506 KB - PDF version)

Page Top

Environmental Design Review

At the product-planning stage, the Design Review is conducted from all angles. The in-house standards make it obligatory for related departments to conduct the Environmental Design Review at the planning stage.
The Environmental Design Review includes "Compliance with laws and regulations," "Environmental Assessment on Products," "Response to Environmental Labels," "LCA Implementation and Factor Calculation" and "Response to Environmental Design Guide" shown in the diagram. The "Environmental Assessment on Products" is used to assess the degree of achievement on the Voluntary Plan for Environmental Protection, responses to the 3R (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle) and energy conservation, progress regarding reduction in environment-related substances, and confirmation of compliance with the Voluntary Environmental Standards. The Environmental Design Review is conducted at each stage of planning, design, prototype production and mass production trial. For instance, basic environmental design specifications are reviewed, compliance with laws and regulations and response to various environmental labels are specifically defined at the planning stage. Compliance and compatibility with target values and confirmation of compliance are verified at the design stage or later. The environmental specifications of updated products are examined at the development stage, to set higher target values.

Concept regarding Design of ECPs

TOSHIBA TEC Corporation devotes its energies to the reduction of environmental impacts on products, because its business activities exert most environmental impacts on society at the stages of "procurement of raw materials and components" and "product usage."
At the stage of "procurement of raw materials and components," reduction of environmental impacts is required in terms of resource consumption. In terms of preventing global warming, reduction of environmental impacts is required at the stage of "product usage," because electricity consumption plays a major role on environmental impacts. In addition, certain chemical substances, which may cause environmental pollution need to be avoided or reduced in terms of environmental pollution. TOSHIBA TEC Corporation enhances the design of ECPs while taking into account 3R conscious design, energy-saving design and design for reducing environmental impact substances.

3R Conscious Design

3R conscious design is intended to effectively use resources, and minimize the amount of resources consumed for products, while circulating resources through reuse and recycling. Reduce Design, Reuse Design and Recycle Design are defined in order of priority. The 3R conscious design is implemented on packaging rather than products.

Energy-saving Design

Energy-saving design is intended to reduce electricity consumption at the product usage phase, and develop energy-saving technologies specific for each product as well as common-saving technologies among all products. In particular, a typical example of achievements includes high-efficiency induction heating or IH fusing technology integrated into an MFP.

Page Top

Design for Reducing Environmental Impact Substances

The TOSHIBA TEC Group is a leader, who actively complies with laws and regulations in and outside Japan, such as the RoHS Directive, which became effective on July 1, 2006, the China RoHS, which became effective on March 1, 2007, and the EU REACH Regulation, which was effective on June 1, 2007. For voluntary activities, halogen-free materials are used for plastic cases and printed circuit boards. The use of polyvinyl chlorides is reduced for power cords.

Design Views and Examples of Achievements

* Design Views and Examples of Achievements (919 KB - PDF version)

Adobe Acrobat Reader is required to view PDF documents.
Get Adobe Reader.

(Please note another window.)