| Design for Recycling |
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| We implement product design that makes the recycling of materials easy. |
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| Why is the reuse of raw materials pursued? |
 Prevention of resource exhaustion |
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Past oil crises taught us an important lesson - that the Earth's resources are finite and will be exhausted some day if we continue to consume them. Most plastics are derived from petroleum. It is important to promote the recycling of these plastics, as this directly contributes to preventing a drain on petroleum resources. We continue to implement design for recycling that allows plastic parts to be recycled and reused.
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| Reuse as materials |
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Recycling of plastics can be carried out through "material recycling" that reuses plastics as resin, "chemical recycling" that produces chemical raw materials, and "thermal recycling" that turns plastic into fuel. Plastics have the longest life cycle when reused as resin. This use also prevents a drain on resources and produces fewer environmental impacts than incineration or disposal in landfill.
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| Commitments for Toshiba PC |
| To promote material recycling, Toshiba note PC adopts various implementation of design for recycling. Major implementation is use of plastic material that fits recycling, reduction of the number of screws, reduction of types of plastic materials, mechanical design for easy disassembling and information provision for recycling. |
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| Reduction of the number of parts, design for disassembling |
| Reduction of the number of parts that joint parts with each others, such as screws, is important for easy dissembling and it contributes to promotion of recycling. Internal cabling also affects easy disassembling. Then reduction of the number of printed circuit boards (PCBs) and number of connection between PCBs with cables lead to easy disassembling PC.
In order to fix internal cables to the case or housing, many bands or tapes are usually used. When the case and housing have several claws and they are used to fix cables in place of tapes or bands, disassembling of PC become easier and tapes or bands are eliminated.
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Tecra A11 |
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| Variety reduction of plastics material |
| For plastic recycling it is important to reduce variety of plastic material used for a product, because this makes it easy to separate plastic parts into materials.
It is also important to reduce variety of plastic material through all products. Our design guidelines recommend to use PC + ABS (mixture of PC and ABS) for the case and housing. |
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| Plastic case without coating |
The plastic case of PC is usually coated. The reason is not only to make
up to beautiful color but also to make the case surface beautiful. The
texture of the case surface itself is not beautiful due to uneveness.
However, from the view point of plastic recycling, no coating is better
for material collection. Therefore, Toshiba developed a ridge pattern-surfaced
PC whose case is free from coating. |
Tecra A11
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| Indication of raw materials for plastic parts |
Plastics is a general term for polymers that can be processed and molded into different forms with heat and pressure. Strong, light plastics are widely used in manufacturing, including for PC cases.
However, there are difficulties in treating plastics as waste materials.
For example:
- The type of plastic cannot be specified simply by looking at it, so analysis at the time of disposal can be difficult.
- Plastics differ by processing method, and when they are mixed they are difficult to recycle.
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| Indication of raw materials |
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Foreseeing such difficulties early on, Toshiba PCs has indicated raw materials of plastic components that are used for PC cases since June 1994.
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