Integrated circuits towards reducing e-waste: Future design directions

Electronic devices and systems are not usually environmentally friendly. Large amounts of energy and hazardous substances are required for their production, and discarded products end up in landfills; trends that are exacerbated by fast moving advances in consumer electronics. In this paper, we argue that the most promising way to reduce the environmental load of consumer electronics is to move towards reusable electronic components; components that are reliable, self-testing, and, most importantly, flexible in a manner that allow electronic systems to be build for a wide range of applications using only a few highly reconfigurable integrated circuits.