Electronics and the environment

Citation

Ellis, B. (1999), "Electronics and the environment", Circuit World, Vol. 25 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/cw.1999.21725aaa.001

Electronics and the environment

Electronics and the environment

Prior to 1980, the general public considered the electronics industry as clean, non-polluting and not dangerous. Gradually, this image was eroded as problems became apparent. Of course, the printed circuit fabrication sector was the first to attract the notice of the various authorities. It suffices to cite some of the chemicals used at the time for etching and plating to understand this:

lead fluoborate;formaldehyde;gold cyanide;copper pyrophosphate;ferric chloride;ammonium persulfate, etc.

Half of the PC fabrication was, at that time, conducted by a large number of "bucket" shops with no qualified chemists or electrochemists, let alone a waste water treatment plant. Many of these workshops joyously poured all their waste down the drain or elsewhere into the environment. They were, happily, very small enterprises, on the whole, averaging less than ten persons employed and treating a maximum of 20m² of laminate in a good week, so the quantities involved were individually small. Their aggregate pollution was very high and quickly brought into disrepute an industry, which was nevertheless struggling to produce a more professional image. New waste water regulations in many countries forced some of these shops to adopt more professional manufacturing techniques while others, combined with economic pressures, simply put their front door key under the doormat, for good.

Today, most PC fabricators belong to a reputable industry, which is very environmentally responsible. This does not necessarily imply that environmental decisions or policies made by groups of manufacturers or trade associations are for the good of mankind. One large organisation has recently asked its members to lobby politicians to oppose the measures proposed for the Kyoto Protocol, for example.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, some of the larger assemblers started to question both environmental and health and safety issues of their processes. Again, many small companies were left largely ignorant of this trend and continued operations as if they did not pollute, which was their firm belief. The fact that they were losing, by evaporation, large quantities of cleaning solvents was not even considered as polluting; it was just an economic nuisance pushing up the overheads. The second fact that they could have stopped much of the evaporation by simple machine and operational modifications did not even occur to the average user, such was their blind faith in their suppliers.

The advent of the Montreal Protocol shocked fabricators and assemblers alike. All of a sudden, the fabricators found that the solvent they used in large quantities for developing dry film resists had become anathema and the assemblers found that they were using ozone-depleting solvents for defluxing, as well. This was exacerbated by the publication of reports where some of these solvent vapours were found to be responsible for a few cases of fatal cardiac arrest.

All these new problems had a double effect: a generally increasing awareness that the electronics industry was not as non-polluting as was generally thought and that there was also an increasing awareness of health and safety issues within the industry. Notwithstanding, although we have made much progress in our understanding of these problems and taken steps to reduce or eliminate some of them, this is only a start: we, in the electronics industry still have a long way to go before we can start bragging about our achievements in the field.

Brian EllisProtonique SA

Note: Further comments from Brian Ellis, along with invited papers covering environmental issues in the electronics industry can be found on-line at: http://www.mcb.co.uk/emstgf/eee/current/millenial.htm. This site is a Millennial Retrospective of the achievements in this field, jointly published by Circuit World, Soldering & Surface Mount Technology and Microelectronics International. There is also a look forward to what the industry needs to do in the first decade of the third millennium to clean up its act. Readers who wish to make their environmental experiences and views known are invited to contribute to this Millennial Retrospective, even if their subject is quite peripheral to the main theme. Please contact Brian at b_ellis@protonique.com.