Periodic Reporting for period 2 - EECONE (European ECOsystem for greeN Electronics)
Berichtszeitraum: 2024-09-01 bis 2025-08-31
Many different environmental impacts arise from electronics, and the handling of electronic waste (e-waste) is rising quickly to the top of the agenda. E-waste is a significant issue for Europe: Improving its management is an explicit goal of the Green Deal objectives and the Circular Economy Action Plan (3.1. Electronics and ICT). However, due to the requirement to involve the whole value chain, from raw material suppliers to consumers, the complex material background and supply chain, as well as the multitude of competing interests, achieving circularity in the electronics industry is challenging. The main aim of the EECONE project is to reduce e-waste on a European scale. The entities that make up EECONE represent all parts of the value chain. EECONE’s approach is interdisciplinary, covering the social, economic, technological, and policy aspects.
EECONE’s vision is to develop and embed the constraints linked to managing the end-of-life of electronic products from the very beginning – in the development or process design. EECONE is paving the way as a first step toward a zero-waste electronic industry. The “6R concept will fully guide EECONE” (Reduce, Reliability, Repair, Reuse, Refurbish, Recycle).
To deploy its ambitious vision, the EECONE project defines four main objectives:
a) Define green. Create clear, simple, open tools to define and design ECS for circularity. Generate, for the first time, a clear framework aiding producers to evaluate their choices and pathways to ecodesign, to foster European leadership in the green transition.
b) Make green ECS (Electronic Components Systems): Provide innovative techniques for reducing, repairing, reusing, refurbishing, recycling to decrease e-waste and boost circularity in a new generation of electronics.
c) Showcase green solutions: Demonstrate innovation potential, usability, and versatility of the green solution along the value chain.
d) Building consciousness: Create an ecosystem empowering the 6R ECS generation
EECONE is a major opportunity to create a European ECOsystem for greeN Electronics and to position Europe as a role model for low environmental impact electronics. /
EECONE’s vision is to develop and embed the constraints linked to managing the end-of-life of electronic products from the very beginning – in the development or process design. EECONE is paving the way as a first step toward a zero-waste electronic industry. The “6R concept will fully guide EECONE” (Reduce, Reliability, Repair, Reuse, Refurbish, Recycle).
To deploy its ambitious vision, the EECONE project defines four main objectives:
a) Define green. Create clear, simple, open tools to define and design ECS for circularity. Generate, for the first time, a clear framework aiding producers to evaluate their choices and pathways to ecodesign, to foster European leadership in the green transition.
b) Make green ECS (Electronic Components Systems): Provide innovative techniques for reducing, repairing, reusing, refurbishing, recycling to decrease e-waste and boost circularity in a new generation of electronics.
c) Showcase green solutions: Demonstrate innovation potential, usability, and versatility of the green solution along the value chain.
d) Building consciousness: Create an ecosystem empowering the 6R ECS generation
EECONE is a major opportunity to create a European ECOsystem for greeN Electronics and to position Europe as a role model for low environmental impact electronics. /
During period 2, significant progress was achieved towards all project objectives:
The partners of WP2 worked on identifying all construction and materials constraints faced by the value chain to enhanced reparation, reuse, refurbishing or recycling. Pragmatic solutions have been listed for each constraint to help WP3 work on Eco design tools. Some test on new products developed taking those constraints in account are ongoing to validate the feasibil-ity or those solutions and the global impact. The partners of WP3 have made progress towards the first objective, advancing the development of the tools identified to support the definition and design of ECS for circularity and environmental impact re-duction. These tools are currently being tested on various use cases of EECONE to validate their ap-plicability and effectiveness. In parallel, the partners have continued the work on ecodesign metrics, with the proposal of new ones, to assess and guide design choices. Furthermore, a first set of ecodesign guidelines has been defined, providing a structured foundation for future work. Together, these developments represent a step toward establishing a catalogue of tools to help electronic design-ers and engineers evaluate design pathways.
The partners of WP3 have advanced toward the second objective, focusing on the development of inno-vative approaches to make ECS more environmentally sustainable by promoting the 6R of the project. A key achievement has been the identification or definition of metrics to assess lifetime extension and circularity. These metrics will enable a more systematic understanding of how specific design choices impact the ECS longevity. The partners of WP4 have advanced towards achieving the second objective. Low environmental im-pact materials have been identified; some developed some procured. Significant progress was done in less materials in product. Second life to electronics is making progress through SW development and demonstrator development. Progress also in creating the tools to safely increase product lifetime. Good progress is done with the new small battery pack undergoing testing.
All 10 project use cases significantly advanced in showcasing their green solutions.
Thanks to multiple contents production and diffusion throughout EECONE website, we have good visi-bility. In particular, two types of contents have been developed produced and diffused. The first one is a complement to the first EECONE video with the production of 6 additional and focused videos to intro-duce and define at best R options. Second, following our objective to present our project we have run several webinars to introduce our 10 Uses Cases and to outline the objective with respect to circularity in electronics.
The partners of WP2 worked on identifying all construction and materials constraints faced by the value chain to enhanced reparation, reuse, refurbishing or recycling. Pragmatic solutions have been listed for each constraint to help WP3 work on Eco design tools. Some test on new products developed taking those constraints in account are ongoing to validate the feasibil-ity or those solutions and the global impact. The partners of WP3 have made progress towards the first objective, advancing the development of the tools identified to support the definition and design of ECS for circularity and environmental impact re-duction. These tools are currently being tested on various use cases of EECONE to validate their ap-plicability and effectiveness. In parallel, the partners have continued the work on ecodesign metrics, with the proposal of new ones, to assess and guide design choices. Furthermore, a first set of ecodesign guidelines has been defined, providing a structured foundation for future work. Together, these developments represent a step toward establishing a catalogue of tools to help electronic design-ers and engineers evaluate design pathways.
The partners of WP3 have advanced toward the second objective, focusing on the development of inno-vative approaches to make ECS more environmentally sustainable by promoting the 6R of the project. A key achievement has been the identification or definition of metrics to assess lifetime extension and circularity. These metrics will enable a more systematic understanding of how specific design choices impact the ECS longevity. The partners of WP4 have advanced towards achieving the second objective. Low environmental im-pact materials have been identified; some developed some procured. Significant progress was done in less materials in product. Second life to electronics is making progress through SW development and demonstrator development. Progress also in creating the tools to safely increase product lifetime. Good progress is done with the new small battery pack undergoing testing.
All 10 project use cases significantly advanced in showcasing their green solutions.
Thanks to multiple contents production and diffusion throughout EECONE website, we have good visi-bility. In particular, two types of contents have been developed produced and diffused. The first one is a complement to the first EECONE video with the production of 6 additional and focused videos to intro-duce and define at best R options. Second, following our objective to present our project we have run several webinars to introduce our 10 Uses Cases and to outline the objective with respect to circularity in electronics.
It is the ambition of EECONE to create a lasting impact on e-waste reduction and to establish the 6R concept throughout the European ECS industry, developing innovations beyond the state-of-the-art (BSOA) and using those in a wide-ranging field of applications in all key application areas of the ECS-SRIA (demonstrated in use cases). The anticipated progress in the state of the art for the technologies selected along EECONE’s Technology axis, in particular with regards to improving green credentials and e-waste reduction, is described.The application potential of these technologies will then be further demonstrated in EECONE’s 10 use cases (UC).
Demonstrators for 10 use cases:
- UC-01: Electrical Control Units for Automotive Industry
- UC-02: Power Electronic Inverter On Board Charger and DCDC converter
- UC-03: Membrane switches improved via the 6R strategy
- UC-04: Eco-designed remote-control unit (RCU)
- UC-05: Creation of Critical Raw Material Value Chain in Appliances, Creation of Traceability Systems, and Recycling Strategies
- UC-06: Health monitoring devices employing point-of-care sensors
- UC-07: Reducing data centre e-waste via technical LCA-driven refresh and reuse
- UC-08: Service life extension of ICT user equipment toward Internet access within planetary boundaries
- UC-09: Sensing electronics for health management system in an aeronautical structural component
- UC-10: Green Soil Probe – Technologies for green IoT devices for agriculture
Demonstrators for 10 use cases:
- UC-01: Electrical Control Units for Automotive Industry
- UC-02: Power Electronic Inverter On Board Charger and DCDC converter
- UC-03: Membrane switches improved via the 6R strategy
- UC-04: Eco-designed remote-control unit (RCU)
- UC-05: Creation of Critical Raw Material Value Chain in Appliances, Creation of Traceability Systems, and Recycling Strategies
- UC-06: Health monitoring devices employing point-of-care sensors
- UC-07: Reducing data centre e-waste via technical LCA-driven refresh and reuse
- UC-08: Service life extension of ICT user equipment toward Internet access within planetary boundaries
- UC-09: Sensing electronics for health management system in an aeronautical structural component
- UC-10: Green Soil Probe – Technologies for green IoT devices for agriculture