Quantified innovation in ICT: Life Cycle Assessment approach applied to two generations of home gateways

Home Gateways represent a large category of products including Customer Premises Equipment such as DSL CPEs, cable CPEs, optical network termination CPEs and ethernet routers. In the present study, environmental and energy assessment was produced in terms of LCA application to two different generations of ADSL basic modems, designed and commercialized in 2007 and 2011. The study show how the environmental impacts of the oldest generation of home gateways can be reduced using principles of ecodesign for the external chassis and, most important, the significant improvement induced by the upgrading of the printed circuit board, which allowed a better efficiency during the use phase, thanks to the new software and hardware layout. Furthermore, it is given an overview of the possible end of life scenarios, including a sensitivity analysis focused on the amount of recovered or recycled materials.