A ‘first of kind’ system that collects used CDs and DVDs and recycles the plastic for use in plastic laptop casings has been developed in Tokyo by Fujitsu Limited and Fujitsu Laboratories Limited.
The company said that it is collecting unwanted disks at Fujitsu Group recycling centres and reuses the plastic in the bodies of its notebook PCs.
According to Fujitsu, to avoid the risk of contaminants being mixed into the recycled plastic, the new recycling system performs quality control based on a chemical substances risk management database developed by Fujitsu Laboratories, thereby ensuring that notebook PCs and other ICT devices comply with legal requirements for chemical components.
Fujitsu explained that it collects, disassembles, sorts and recycles personal computers and other products at its five recycling centres across Japan. However, reusing the recovered plastic in new computer units had posed a number of challenges.
Firstly, the company said that when different types of plastic are involved, a uniform mixture is impossible to achieve even by melting the plastic. As a result, it is necessary to collect only a single type of plastic to ensure the desired material properties.
Even so, in a given plastic, there may be differences in ingredients, visual defects, or impurities that make it difficult to achieve the same moulding characteristics, colours, strength and other properties as conventional plastics, Fujitsu added.
Furthermore, the PC manufacturer added that compliance with the RoHS directive and REACH regulations regarding the safety of chemicals in ICT products has made it challenging to control the quality of recycled plastics, and until now it has been impossible to reuse recovered plastic in computer bodies.
With this in mind, Fujitsu said that it turned its attention to CDs and DVDs, which are often included with PCs and are available in predictable quantities. These optical disks are made from polycarbonate, a type of plastic suitable for use in the bodies of notebook PCs.
Moreover, according to Fujitsu they do not include any contaminants, such as flame retardants so they were deemed to be a suitable material for recycling.
Quality control
As part of its quality control process, Fujitsu claimed that it has long followed the practices of designing products to be easily disassembled and labelling the types of plastic used in its products to enable easy identification.
In addition, the company said that it employs Fujitsu Laboratories’ risk management database of the chemical substances included in plastic materials to verify whether or not the collected CD and DVD fragments contain harmful substances.
Through collaboration with plastic washing and processing company PANAC Industries, and resin compound manufacturer, Idemitsu Kosan, Fujitsu said that it has been able to improve the quality and manage the safety of its recycled plastics.
This, in turn, has enabled it to develop what it claimed to be the PC industry’s first system for recycling end-of-life products collected at its own recycling centres, thereby making it possible to reuse the recovered plastics in the bodies of PCs.
Compared to conventional notebook PC manufacturing processes, the company said that it expects this system to reduce CO2 emissions by approximately 15 per cent.
Going forward, the company said that it plans to expand the use of this system to support a wider variety of recycled materials in addition to CDs and DVDs and to employ these plastics in other products.
