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General audio topics that don't fit into specific categories.

Definitely a thesis topic.

Its quite a daunting task to assess the impact of a commercial product on the environment. Here’s the tip of the iceberg:

For amplification systems, I think that the more components a piece of electronics has, the more difficult it is to ‘unassemble’ and recycle that item. For example, with solder (which contains environmentally nasty lead) in all the electrical connections, I would assume that boards with the minimum amount of connections to be most friendly. Recovering the lead from circuit boards through an acid-leaching process isn’t very economical because of the low price of lead, but it is profitable to recover the copper from the traces on the board.

The purification of copper, the manufacture of solid state components, etc. are all industries that can generate a lot of effluents during manufacture. It’s in the interest of any company to minimize the pollutants that are output, because that is associated with making the most efficient use of the input products. Also, legislation in most developed countries prevents factories from draining these into the environment. It may make more sense to try quantifying the amount of total energy input required to build ‘Item A’ vs. ‘Item B’.

I can't recall hearing of anyone that did a life-cycle analysis of hi-fi stereo equipment. (These cradle-to-grave studies have been done for numerous products like cars, dishwashers, etc., so maybe someone somewhere HAS analyzed the hi-fi industry?). If you have access to a local university, I would suggest going on their computers and accessing E-Indexes (like, “Environmental Sciences & Pollution Management”) that let you search for research papers on this topic - you may find a gold-mine of info. You can discuss opinions on what’s better all day. Research is rooted in evidence.



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  • Definitely a thesis topic. - chillysalsa 11/15/0220:09:19 11/15/02 (0)


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