Economic and Environmental Evaluation of Fasteners for Active Disassembly: A Case Study for Payment Terminals

Prior research has demonstrated that design for disassembly enables higher recovery rates for precious and critical metals, as well as flame retardant plastics from End-of-Life (EoL) electronics. However, small EoL electronic products are nowadays commonly recycled in a size-reduction based treatment or can be directly treated in an integrated Precious Metal (PM) smelter-refinery. In this article, a methodology is described to calculate the Rate of Return (RoR) on investing in fasteners which can be simultaneously released by the application of an external trigger, following the principle of active disassembly. This methodology is used in the presented case study to calculate the ROR of implementing a pressure sensitive snap-fit in an electronic payment terminal which is sold in a product service system business model. In addition, the economic and environmental performances of an active disassembly based EoL treatment is compared with those of a manual disassembly and a size-reduction based treatment, as well as direct treatment in an integrated PM smelter-refinery. Results of the presented case study demonstrate that the ROR on investing in active fasteners for the case study product is 27%. (C) 2015 The Authors Published by Elsevier B.V.