An electric toothbrush is a toothbrush that makes rapid automatic bristle motions, either back-and-forth oscillation or rotation-oscillation , to provide oral cleaning service, removal dental plaque from the surface of teeth. Electric toothbrush generally powered by rechargeable battery or disposable battery. The functional unit for the electric toothbrush is 3 years per use where 2 times per day. The functional unit for the replaceable brush head is 3 months per use.
We will study the case of Philips’s electric toothbrush. Philips is a Dutch technology company with primary divisions focused in the areas of electronics, healthcare and lighting. The mission of Philips is to improve people’s lives through meaningful innovation …show more content…
Start with the input-resource extraction, distribution and disposal require distinct material and property. In distribution, paper card box is typically use for outside packaging, inside there maybe polystyrene foam or small plastic bags to separate the brush head, toothbrush and charger. If it could reduce to one type of material for example only cardboard, then costs on purchasing and packaging could be saved. Also, a simple and compact package can lower the weight, favor the energy use during transportation and average cost because more products can be transported in the same …show more content…
For incineration and landfill, energy and resource is wasted, even release CO2 and other chemicals to the environment. For recycling, the end-of-life product can be turned into resource again inside the electric toothbrush cycle or into other process.
The idea of relationship between manufacturing and consumer use and disposal is similar above, that is the design and processes will make a difference in the following stages. For example, a toothbrush battery is broken but the product is perfectly sealed. If the design is changed to the opposite, then it can continue its life instead of disposed early than its functional unit.
Between package and disposal, although cardboard is biodegradable and recyclable, a lot of company choose to have cardboard with plastic coating which makes it less recyclable and sustainable. Some consumers may not know if they can recycle the coated box and result in treating them as regular garbage. So choosing non coated cardboard is environment better and give better incentive for recycling because it is obvious recyclable comparatively.
Rechargeable batteries can contain heavy metals such as nickel, zinc and cadmium that can be very damaging to the environment and human