Thursday November 20, 2008
Greening of consumer electronics
By SUJESH PAVITHRAN
Environmental concerns are playing an increasingly significant role in the field of consumer electronics
ONCE, it may have seemed odd that a company would fly you out thousands of kilometres for a product launch event, and then talk mostly about being an environmentally responsible manufacturer and educating consumers to be ecologically aware.
Like many other big corporations, consumer electronics giant Philips has drawn its share of flak from environmental activists for a variety of reasons, but especially over energy conservation and waste disposal issues.
Greener street lamps: Philips’ Light Blossom can help cities optimse energy usage. During the Philips Simplicity Event 2008, held at the Red Square in Moscow last month, Philips emphasised on the concept of ecologically conscious consumers, and responsible companies that made ecologically-friendly products without taxing the planet’s resources and environment as much as they did in the past.
As someone from the company joked, “There’s been too much ‘electronics’ in consumer electronics; now we’re putting ‘consumer’ back into it.”
Conservation and consumerism are often at odds with each other.
Different themes: Interchangable TV frames to suit your mood or decor. Consumers have an appetite for things they may not always even need, and the production of such goods only adds to increasing concerns over the planet’s environmental health. Consumer electronics companies have often been accused of not being responsible for cleaning up after themselves and contributing significantly to pollution at various levels.
Philips’ Circle of Life mission will see the company “progressively incorporating a design-for-recycling concept in its creation process, and increasing its commitments through end-of-life recycling management.”
According to Philips, the “consumer class” now has around 1.7 billion people, many of them devoted to accumulating non-essential goods, while other items that were once luxuries are now necessities.
Wake-up call: The Wake-Up lamp that gradually brightens the room in the morning. In the future, Philips expects two important changes – how consumers get what they need, and a change in consumers’ belief in what their needs are.
This mandates retailers being more ethically conscious as consumers demand more insight into the products they buy – how these products were made and by whom. Philips acknowledges that consumers are becoming more aware of industry issues, resulting in new purchasing behaviour, like “buying green and/or local”.
The company says the Circle Of Life concept will make for a “truly informed and heightened” shopping experience for consumers – old products can be returned, recycled and reused, while new products will be assembled on-site, created with input from the customer. The concept also includes consumers being rewarded with “eco credits” for returning older products for proper disposal or recycling.
Philips also introduced its energy-efficient Green Cuisine concept. The company already makes a range of kitchen appliances, and Green Cuisine will allow families to lead a healthier lifestyle and enjoy a “greener” cooking experience that includes reducing energy consumption in the kitchen and optimising waste management, but without compromising on style and performance.
According to Philips, kitchen appliances account for more than 25% of household energy consumption, and this can be reduced by getting several domestic products to work together – like the Interactive Kitchen Table, which is both a dinner table and cooking top.
Space saver: Philips Ambisound Soundbar for stylised sound Lighting is where it all began for Philips over a century ago, and the company remains the leading player in this field. Thus, it is only natural for the company to focus on energy-saving light products and concepts. This has been a continuing concept for Philips, and has been applied to domestic, commercial and public use.
An industrial product the Philips is proposing is Light Blossom, a street-lamp that uses Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) to provide energy efficient solutions and reduce “light pollution” at night. This promises to change the way street lights are made, powered and used.
Light Blossom is a pole that harnesses renewable energy – solar and wind – during the day and shines only the required amount of light at night. It is named for its petal-like panels that open up during the day to collect solar energy, and which re-orient themselves through the day for maximised energy capture from the sun.
These “petals” also work as a turbine to store wind-generated energy, on days when the weather is cloudier and windier. The system allows the lamp to store energy for its own needs or pass it back to a grid, enabling a “greener” approach to lighting cities.
One interesting “light” product, designed for customer comfort, is the Wake-Up Light - a “dawn simulator” that gradually brightens the room and allows the body to gently wake up.
Nodding more towards customer indulgences is Flavours, targeted at the home entertainment market to allow consumers to personalise their products – including interchangeable surrounds in a variety of finishes and colours for panel TVs.
Philips also showed some new lifestyle AV products, like its second generation Aurea LCD TVs, Ambisound Soundbar, a network player and Prestigo universal remote control, but these played second fiddle in Philips’ grander and greener scheme of things for the future.
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