PW06 Life-Cycle Assessment
Exhibit Hall
8:00 AM - Wednesday
(PW068) Design for Environment in Regional Telecommunications Networks—Case Study on Structural Plants and Components.
Kitabayashi, H.1, Kunioka, T.2, Yoshida, Y.3, Matsumoto, M.3, Toyoda, E.3, Miyajima, Y.3, Ichino, T., 1 Technology Department, NTT-East, Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan2 Energy and Environment Systems Laboratories, NTT, Atsugi, Kanagawa, Japan3 Technical Assistance and Support Center, NTT-East, Shinagawa, Tokyo, Japan
ABSTRACT- Structural plants and components like telephone poles and underground cable conduits occupy a large portion of regional telecommunications networks in physical mass, which constitute a part of the most important social infrastructures. Accordingly, the environmental impacts that they are involved in are significant, and appropriate management to control them is critical for implementing corporate social responsibility. By analyzing models representing the telecommunications networks, we extracted environmental impacts originating from the structural plants and components throughout their life cycle, and compared them with those from other network components. The major environmental impacts of structural components are generated in production process. From this view point, various measures to reduce their environmental impacts, e.g., promoting recycling, have been taken. Telephone poles are taken up as an important target, since they sustain crucial telecommunications components like cables and large numbers of them are replaced every year. Although both steel and concrete telephone poles have already been recycled in different ways, we further advance to 3Rs approach for steel telephone poles. By introducing durable saturated-polyester powder coating to its bottom part, it is effectively protected from underground corrosive environments, and the lifetime is, hence, substantially increased, resulting in a corresponding reduction in the total input of natural resource and energy necessary for its production. Furthermore, telephone poles once removed from the field become reusable. The effectiveness of this environmental measure evaluated through LCA is also presented.
Key words: Telecommunications Network, Design for Environment, Structural Plants and Components