University Waste Reduction: ENGT5260 Assignment B Report

This report, prepared for ENGT5260, investigates resource-efficient design principles and their application to waste reduction, focusing on computer data storage. It compares the environmental impact and product lifecycles of Hard Disk Drives (HDDs) and Solid State Drives (SSDs). The report examines the composition of both types of drives, highlighting the use of toxic materials and the generation of waste during their production and disposal. It emphasizes the longer lifespan, lower power consumption, and reduced use of toxic elements in SSDs, making them a more sustainable alternative to HDDs. The analysis covers waste management strategies, product cycles, and design recommendations for minimizing environmental degradation. The report highlights the shift towards detachable furniture and other innovations that support recyclability and resource efficiency. The conclusion reinforces the benefits of SSDs in reducing waste and promoting sustainable computing practices.

Running head: ENGT5260: Assignment B
ENGT5260
Assignment B: Recommendations for waste reduction and improved resource use
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note

1ENGT5260: Assignment B
Introduction.
Efficient designing is the key to unlocking a string of potential resources capable of
maintaining environmental stability and managing waste. While the constant increment in the
number and variety of products that are coming out are definitely a significant benefit in the
human lives, there is no denying the fact that a series of degrading environmental aspects
come out before, after as well as within the life cycle of the product. Lack of prior foresight
and less strategic implementation of planning can be identified as some of the root causes
behind product cycles and their contribution to environmental degradation. Furthermore, the
more the efficiency is demanded from a product in terms of feasibility, user friendliness,
looks, longevity and overall functionality, the more the pressure is on utilising resources to
better the product (Arrobbio & Padovan 2018). That indirectly stresses the environment and
causes some form of harm to manifest (Arrobbio & Padovan 2018). Therefore, there is a
lingering debate as to whether or not it is possible to compromise on resource consumption
while maintaining efficiency (Arrobbio & Padovan 2018; Alexander 2008). Apart from just
the environmental context, a resource efficient design also looks at how limited the amount of
resources can be used in making the product. This works in favour of sustainability.
Currently, each country in the world has significantly employed advanced engineering
models and equipment which has been instrumental in bringing down the resource used while
building (Alexander & McLeod 2014). Furthermore, they have also been important in
reducing the amount of energy usage. That has been one constant for almost all countries
which have adopted the new technologies for building resource efficient and environmentally
non – challenging products which do not compromise with efficiency but also actively
promote user friendliness (Alexander & McLeod 2014). One interesting development in this
field can be identified as detachable furniture. As the name suggests, these kind of products
have detachable body part making it easy to repair and recycle. Detachable chairs, for

2ENGT5260: Assignment B
instance has detachable limbs which can be taken apart from the body and replaced with a
new one. This makes the process not only simpler in terms of use but also in terms of
resource utility.
The current report on resource efficient design actually concerns two distinct products
in the same functional area. Computer data storage has been a vital domain where
technological advancement can be seen to have happened in leaps. With larger storage
devices capable of storing merely megabytes of data to smaller chips with a capacity of
holding huge terabytes of data, one can assume that computer storage devices have
undergone vital transformations to reach the current stage. Furthermore, more digital data is
being generated and in higher qualities, making finding better and alternate storage options
not only a technological competition but also a primal requirement in computing. Hard drives
form the core of any computational system and the most common form of this technology is
the mechanical and optical, hard disk drives (HDD) which have been in existence for quite a
number of decades. However, as much as there is a need for more amount of storage, there is
a compromise in data accessibility that has to be made in terms of speed. Hard disks are slow
and accessing data requires crossing a mechanical threshold that limits the rotating speed of
the disk inside. The entry of Solid State Drives (SSD) has made accessing data significantly
faster by providing the user with a direct access to the storage unit without the data being
mediated by any mechanical part within the disk. In this report, a critical comparison between
Hard Disk Drives and Solid State Drives will be made form a resource efficient design
perspective and see if Solid State Drives are a viable alternative for Hard Disk Drives, what
compromises are they making and what aspect of resource utility are they undertaking.

3ENGT5260: Assignment B
Waste management and product cycle.
Each of those products that are non - renewable and non - repairable, have to be
thrown out at some point in time, thereby contributing to the generation of waste products.
Waste management critically looks at processes and ways the generation of waste can be
limited to a bare minimum (House of Lords Science and Technology Committee 2008).
Corporations have also started looking at ways waste generation can be limited while they are
building products, not just because they put unnecessary strain on the environment, but
because protection of the environment forms a core part of their Corporate Social
Responsibility (Babiak & Trendafilova 2011). It is further important to look at waste
management from a productive perspective so that the generation of waste can also be looked
at from a recycling and management viewpoint (Report of the Government Chief Scientific
Adviser 2016)
This is why every organisation needs to look at their CSR guidelines and examine
their functioning so that they can assess if or not they are complying with the global CSR
framework specific to their field (Babiak & Trendafilova 2011). It is an established fact that
computation generates waste. Either in the form of damaged parts made of plastic and metal,
or in the forms of chemically active by products, waste generation from the computer
industry has been significantly on the rise ever since computers were commercialised and
made available to the public, resulting in large scale commercial manufacturing and equally
high amount of waste generated.

4ENGT5260: Assignment B
Hard Disk Drives: product life and composition.
Hard Disk Drives can be broken down into three parts – the circuit, the disk and the
shell. Most of the times, the circuit and the disk are what is needed for storage of and access
to data. However, the shell is important as it provides protection to the Drive from static
electricity generated within the system. Another key aspect regarding hard disk drives that
need to be kept in mind is that they are formed of a lot of mechanical moving parts. These
parts over time corrode due to friction and heat generated, making it difficult for the system
to be able to process data stored within the drive (Peeters et al. 2018). Handling also proves
to be detrimental for the device given that the moving mechanical parts are highly sensitive to
motion and therefore, improper handling can lead to loss in structural and functional
efficiency of the drive. This leads to eventual decommissioning of the product as a rather
useless one, resulting it to be deemed junk and thrown away (Duan et al. 2011). The typical
life cycle of a hard disk is 3 – 5 years in active service. Within this period, the drive performs
the function of not only storing data but also running operating systems. Therefore those
drives need to be in constant motion in order to provide the system with functional efficiency.
The hard disk, like other storage technologies, is also made with certain precious
elements. Gold, Copper, Palladium, Ruthenium and Platinum are the elements that are key to
the manufacturing of a hard disk. Lead, Nickel and Chromium are also used in the process,
thereby contributing to toxic waste generation. Furthermore, the disk has a partial outer
coating called a platter which is usually made of aluminium which, apart from being quite
energy demanding in the refinement process, also corrodes easily if not coated with other
materials, like Cobalt (Habib, Parajuly & Wenzel 2015). Now, cobalt is a mildly toxic
element and in the metallic form it is also radioactive. Furthermore, it develops proclivity to
dust thereby making the internals of the computer prone to damage. These aspects contribute
to various domains of environmental degradations, starting from general plastic and metallic

5ENGT5260: Assignment B
waste to toxic and radioactive waste (Gaidajis, Angelakoglou & Aktsoglou 2010). It might
seem that one hard disk does not contribute too much to environmental degradation through
waste generation, but it also needs to be kept in mind that a large number of damaged hard
disks are gathered and disposed of at once (Kiddee, Naidu & Wong 2013). There was
therefore a need to look for alternate resources of data storage that involved long lasting and
less environmentally degrading elements and parts in it.
Solid State Drives: a resource efficient point of view.
Solid State Drives can be considered a bigger and upgraded version of computer flash
storage drives. It is a non – mechanical drive which relies on direct electrical transfer of data
from the drive to the system. It is not only smaller and more compact in its attire, but also
significantly faster in terms of data accessibility. However, the point of incorporating SSDs in
the current report is to show how this particular technology has been instrumental in bringing
down the negative impacts on the environment as well as contributes to generally low
resource utility (Lin et al. 2010).
First of all, the construction of a Solid State Drive is much simpler compared to a
Hard Disk Drive. It is not only smaller, but also lacks any moving mechanical parts that could
have been a source for internal damage. Much of the data is stored within the drive circuits,
making it compact and less reliant on mechanical parts. This in turn helps in controlling the
impacts on environment in terms of waste generation.
Solid State Drives last longer than Hard Disks because of their less use of mechanical
parts (Beckman et al. 2011) which could have caused degradation of the drive over time due
to usage. Instead, it uses mostly circuit friendly elements and materials and relies on internal
programming to make the drive capable of storing data . Being faster and more optimal than
Hard Disks, Solid State Drives are more in favour of being used in modern computers.
According to several reports, Solid State Drives have been seen to utilise around 85 % to 95

6ENGT5260: Assignment B
% less toxic elements than a normal Hard Disk Drive. The low content of Gold, Copper,
Palladium, Ruthenium and Plutonium makes the Solid State Drive deplete less resources in
comparison to Hard Disk Drives (Sprecher, Klein & Kramer 2014). Solid State Drives
instead utilise Indium which provides the Drive with approximately 33 % to 35 % higher
functional potential (Beckman et al. 2011). Furthermore, the lower content of Nickel, Lead
and Chromium also provides Solid State Drives with about 90 % lower toxic potentials
(Beckman et al. 2011). While looking at the domain of environmental degradation, it can
therefore be said with assurance that Solid State Drives contribute less to the degradation of
environment. A solid state drive is also much simpler in composition. As mentioned before, it
does not utilise any form of degenerative mechanical parts. Instead, a Solid State Drive is
composed of a primary controller processing unit while the primary storage function is
performed in units known as NAND flash memory sticks, attached to the circuit with
terminals (Beckman et al. 2011). This makes the Solid State Drive last longer and be used
better with the computer than a standard Hard Disk Drive. Lastly, the lack of mechanical
movement within the drive means that there is a savings in terms of power that can be
expected from these drives. A Solid State Drive instead of a Hard Disk Drive in battery
operated systems like laptops, provide the system with an average of 20% less power
consumption, therefore leading to a slower degradation of batteries and thus also contributing
to waste management (Beckman et al. 2011).
Design Recommendations and limitations of Solid State Drives.
There have been several major evolutionary steps in the types of Solid State Drives
ever since its inception. Currently, there exists two distinct variants of Solid State Drives
which are commercially used, are more power efficient and utilise less resources. They are
M.2 Solid State Drives and NVME Solid State Drives. Both of these storage units are capable

7ENGT5260: Assignment B
of holding more data than a standard Solid State Drive and are also more compact in terms of
build.
Even with all the benefits that can be enjoyed with a Solid State Drive, there are
certain caveats that need to be kept in mind. Solid State Drives provide functional efficiency,
meaning computation becomes faster and more reliable and the data is more securely stored
than a hard disk. On the other hand, making a Solid State Drive is comparatively more
expensive than a Hard Disk Drive, thereby making the final product more expensive in itself.
To compromise for the cost, the cut down is made in storage capacity (Beckman et al. 2011).
Solid State Drives are not capable of having as much storage as Hard Disk Drives. Therefore,
for a single terabyte worth of Hard Disk Drive Storage, in order to keep the price constant,
the Solid State Drive is restricted at almost quarter the storage available.
Conclusion.
Computers are an irreplaceable part of our lives (Bartiaux & Salmon 2012) as much
as the storage unit is an irreplaceable part of the computer itself. Keeping that in mind, this
report has looked at Hard Disk Drives and Solid State Drives in terms of their resource use,
efficiency and potential for waste generation. From a resource efficient design perspective, it
can be asserted that Solid State Drives are more environmentally friendly than Hard Disk
Drives and are more capable of providing the users with a better performative experience
than Hard Disk Drives. Solid State Drives utilise less resources compared to Hard Disk
Drives in their build and are therefore more resource friendly as well. This resource use
efficiency has provided a Solid State Drive with an array of beneficial features. Solid State
Drives, firstly, are made of no mechanical moving parts, therefore the chances of it getting
degraded over time is less than that of a Hard Disk Drive which utilises moving parts in order
to function. Secondly, compared to a Hard Disk Drive, a Solid State Drive is more eco -
friendly because it uses less environmentally toxic resources and elements in its construction.

8ENGT5260: Assignment B
This in turn also provides the product with feasible functionality and longevity which cannot
be seen in Hard Disk Drives. Thirdly, because of low resource use, there is automatically low
waste generation in its production, as well as low waste generation opportunities because of
its optimal adaptation with the system and providing the system with longer lasting benefits.
These factors are crucial determinants of what could be and what could not be potential
beneficial factors for the environment (Ellen MacArthur Foundation 2013). It can therefore
be said that a Solid State Drive is a valid product to review under the resource efficient
design aspect.

9ENGT5260: Assignment B
References.
Alexander, J.K., 2008. The mantra of efficiency: from waterwheel to social control. JHU
Press.
Alexander, S. and McLeod, A., 2014. Simple Living in History. Pioneers of the Deep Future.
Simplicity Institute Publishing.
Arrobbio, O. and Padovan, D., 2018. A vicious tenacity: The efficiency strategy confronted
with the rebound effect. Frontiers in Energy Research, 6, p.114.
Babiak, K. and Trendafilova, S., 2011. CSR and environmental responsibility: motives and
pressures to adopt green management practices. Corporate social responsibility and
environmental management, 18(1), pp.11-24.
Bartiaux, F. and Salmón, L.R., 2012. Are there domino effects between consumers' ordinary
and ‘green’practices? An analysis of quantitative data from a sensitisation campaign on
personal carbon footprint. International Review of Sociology, 22(3), pp.471-491.
Beckmann, A., Meyer, U., Sanders, P. and Singler, J., 2011. Energy-efficient sorting using
solid state disks. Sustainable Computing: Informatics and Systems, 1(2), pp.151-163.
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technology, 49(20), pp.12441-12449.

10ENGT5260: Assignment B
House of Lords Science and Technology Committee (2008). Waste Reduction (vol 1) Report,
House of Lords, London. Available at:
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