A study on extending technologies lifespan for the environment safety

In recent decades, the technological devices have become a big burden for the environment. In fact, the production processes are depleting the natural resources and the end-of-life processes are emitting big amounts of heavy pollutants and toxic gases. Today, there is an agreement among researchers that the environmental issues must be considered from a life cycle perspective. In order to reduce the negative impacts of technologies on the environment, the best scenario would be to extend their lifespan. However, an old device, is usually linked to low performances, low profit for the manufacturer, additional reparation costs, high risks, etc. In this paper, the Double-Eco (DE) model, an evaluation platform of the compromise between the performances, cost, ecology, safety and lifespan is developed. Also, the environmental impacts of the lifespan are highlighted through the example of personal computers (PCs) and the DE model is applied to three types of grease lubrication as case of study. The results show that (1) evaluating a technology with all its aspects is efficient when deciding whether to extend its lifespan (2) based on the DE model, the lubrication with the longest lifespan has a better evaluation than the two other studied cases.

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Opracowanie rekordu ze środków MNiSW, umowa Nr 461252 w ramach programu "Społeczna odpowiedzialność nauki" - moduł: Popularyzacja nauki i promocja sportu (2021).