Advent of industrialization and information technology across different industry verticals has taken place at a brisk rate. Owing to continuously evolving technology, the requirement for new and improved products is on a continuous rise, with industries such as manufacturing, IT, consumer electronics, energy, and defense among others seeing predominant impact. These industries have huge requirements of various electronic products and systems to perform different functions efficiently. The subsequent increase in production of such electronic products and systems is however proving hazardous to the environment, affecting human health as well. This is due to wide scale use of harmful chemicals and materials, such as lead and silica, across different stages of production of these electronic products. In order to curb down on these harmful effects, an alternative to the production technology, termed as “Green Manufacturing”, has been globally encouraged. Green manufacturing, in the electronics market, helps in the development of various procedures that involve less input of harmful materials. This in turn helps safeguarding the environment, providing longer shelf life of electronic products and making them energy efficient.
The green manufacturing in electronics market is segmented based on its application as electronics, portable electronics, industrial, automotive and others. Based on the technology, the green manufacturing market is segmented as lead free and halogen free manufacturing. The perilous impact of Lead and Silica leads to mutation of genes in living beings, thereby posing a threat to life. The growing awareness amongst the governmental and environmental protection agencies, regarding the ill effects of various elements used in the manufacturing of electronic products has triggered implementation of green manufacturing in electronics market.
The rising concerns against the ill effects of hazardous materials like lead, cadmium etc which is utilized in manufacturing of electronic products across the globe is driving the green manufacturing in the electronics market. Many regulatory bodies like EPA, Greenpeace have already started amending certain regulatory policies in the context to protect the environment.
The growing concerns of rising unrecyclable e-waste across the globe which adversely impacts the environment and health of living beings has led to impending bans on conventional manufacturing methodologies. The conventional methods involved the use of lead and silica, which are considered to be harmful and hence have been curtailed. The conventional methods resulted in the rise of global temperature. Hence, rise in global temperature has forced regulatory boards like EPA and Greenpeace to impose certain policies that reflects ban on the utilization of certain hazardous material in manufacturing of electronic products. Certain impending bans are awaited to be implemented that would further help in keeping our environment clean and safer.
The instantaneous switch over to green manufacturing in the electronics market may involve huge switching costs to manufacturers. This has thereby proven to be one of the major inhibitor to green manufacturing in the electronics market. Presence of less alternatives to the traditional raw materials used in the manufacturing of electronic goods is restraining many electronic product manufacturers across the globe to adhere to green manufacturing procedure.
Many manufacturers are concerned about the implementation of green manufacturing processes in the electronics market because they are apprehensive of losing certain good suppliers owing to the change in raw material input required for production. The RoHS/WEEE has implemented certain governing policies owing to curtailing down of the usage of hazardous elements in production. The recent stringent policies like ban on usage of halogenated chemicals like PVC and BFR’s and ranking system already implemented by EPA and Greenpeace have forced the electronic manufacturers across the globe like Dell and Apple to indulge into the green manufacturing.
Some of the key players of the green manufacturing in the electronics market are, Nokia, RIM, Toshiba, Samsung, Sharp, Philips, HCL Info system, LG, Apple, Dell, Sony, HP, Acer, Panasonic, VIA, Simmtronics, View Sonic, Lenovo among others.
