Application of Green Manufacturing Technology in Household Appliances (I)

1 Introduction

China is a major producer and consumer of home appliances in the world. In recent years, with the continuous improvement of people’s living standards and the rapid development of science and technology, the replacement of household electrical appliances has become faster and faster, and the number of home appliances that have been eliminated has been staggering. It has become a concern for the disposal of these household appliances. Focus. Because home appliances are a complex mixture of various materials and components, they contain many valuable materials, such as steel, glass, plastics, and precious metals. People use physical decomposition, smelting, or other methods when recycling these materials. Incineration and other methods. However, household electrical appliances contain many substances that are harmful to the environment and human health, such as lead, cadmium, mercury, and hexavalent chromium. Their recycling and use are economically and technically difficult. If they are discarded, burned, or landfilled Direct burial will contaminate soil or water sources and cause serious harm to human health. In addition, CFC-11/12 in the refrigerator will destroy the ozone layer, and the lubricating oil in the refrigeration system will contaminate the soil; for example, some bromine added to the plastic. Flame retardants (such as PBDE and PBB) produce toxic creosote and furan during incineration [1]. Starting from the strategic requirements for environmental protection and sustainable development, the development model, production model, consumption model, and behavior model of home appliances must fully take into account the coordination of economic and environmental effects. The economic development cannot be at the expense of the environment.

Because of this, various countries in the world are currently enacting legislation. For example, the "Household Appliances Recycling Law" in Japan has come into effect on April 1, 2001; the European Union's "Regulations on Restricting the Use of Certain Hazardous Substances in Electrical and Electronic Equipment" will also publish lead. , cadmium, mercury, hexavalent chromium, PBDE, and PBB are listed as hazardous substances and will be banned. The directive will be formally implemented on July 1, 2006; China's legislation on household electrical appliance waste will be introduced soon.

The obligation to protect the environment, meet the needs of green consumers, and comply with laws and regulations prompted home appliance manufacturers to accelerate the pace of applying green manufacturing technologies, while also increasing the research on green manufacturing technologies.

2 The concept of green manufacturing technology

The so-called green manufacturing technology refers to a modern manufacturing model that comprehensively considers the environmental impact and resource utilization during the entire product life cycle from product design, manufacture, transportation, use, and disposal to the purpose of the product life cycle. The destruction or harm of the environment is minimized and the comprehensive utilization of resources is maximized.

In order to properly understand and apply green manufacturing technologies, I think there are several points that are crucial:

1 The green manufacturing technology emphasizes that all the processes in the product life cycle must consider the impact on the environment, identify environmental factors, assess the degree of impact, and determine the disposal strategy.

2 Deciding whether or not to take countermeasures against environmental factors can only be based on the consideration of environmental regulations and comprehensive consideration of environmental impact and resource utilization. Since the only purpose of a company is to obtain profits, it is impossible to simply protect the environment without regard to cost. The responsibility and obligation to protect the environment require companies to comprehensively consider environmental protection and resource issues.

3 In the life cycle of a product, environmental factors are accompanied by attributes such as product quality, and it is not possible to artificially separate environmental control and quality control. At present, enterprises are encouraged to integrate ISO14001 and ISO9001 to avoid this problem.

Because if the two are separated, the customer's requirements for quality are more obvious than the requirements for environmental protection, so that the company will focus on quality control, especially in the situation where quality control has been recognized by all employees. The control of the enterprise on the environment may be weakened, and the environmental control may even be limited to low levels such as water saving, electricity saving, and governance waste. It seems that environmental control is all about spending money, saving materials, designing for energy conservation, and prolonging product life. , increase production efficiency, reduce costs and other activities do not seem to belong to the scope of environmental protection, in the long run, the value-added effect of environmental control is overshadowed, the ISO14001 goal will be out of shape.

4 Environmental regulations emphasize the control results. The most common way for a manufacturing company to meet the results of regulatory requirements for business and trade needs is to use this result as a target for evaluation and judgment, so as to control the corresponding environmental elements and the individual processes involved. Such as factory noise, waste discharge, product recovery rate and re-use, limit the use of hazardous substances and other indicators of control, the company is through the use of governance facilities, in the design process to control the use of materials and components to the target. Therefore, environmental laws and regulations are the main driving force for promoting the development and application of green manufacturing technologies. However, due to the introduction of environmental laws and regulations that are compatible with economic development and technological level, there are limitations in promoting green manufacturing technologies. It is worth noting that environmental regulations may become a way of "non-trade barriers" between regions.

5 The important role of green customers can not be ignored. For example, green manufacturers require that subcontractors meet the requirements of environmental protection; if the group purchases only green products, the EU even encourages the purchase of A+ refrigerators and so on. Relevant manufacturers attach importance to environmental protection and thus apply green manufacturing technologies.

6 Green products are the result of the application of green manufacturing technology. Green factory's production of green products is an ideal state pursued by the development of color-producing methods. The purpose is to make the social and economic development into a benign development and contribute to the sustainable development of the company. In general, the green factory mainly refers to the implementation of the ISO14001 environmental system certification at the factory, which identifies, evaluates and effectively controls the environmental factors in the product design and manufacturing process. The factory's environmental indicators meet the requirements of regulations and customers. , have a positive attitude and considerable investment in the application of green technologies; while green products are mainly aimed at the green attributes of products, such as energy saving, detachability and maintainability, recyclability and reutilization after product retirement (waste minimization ) The treatment process that does not contain harmful substances or wastes will not harm the environment, safety and health.

7 Because the research object of green manufacturing technology is to consider the environmental impact and the effective use of resources, or "environmental-resources optimization", it has a wide range. In addition to the obvious contents of environmental protection, safety inspection, health and hygiene, saving materials, saving energy, saving human resources, and increasing production efficiency are all within the scope of green manufacturing. Summarized as one sentence: In all activities that accompany the product, as long as it is related to the environment and needs to consider the impact on the environment and the content of control, it is the research scope of green manufacturing technology. It involves modern design technologies, advanced manufacturing processes and equipment, environmental technologies, energy technologies, materials science, network technologies, concurrent engineering and systems engineering, as well as environmental standards and legislation.