Device Lifecycle

The one-mark answer ♻️

Ask most candidates about the environmental impact of computers and you get four words: **they use electricity**. It is true. It is also worth about one mark. A device costs the planet something at **every** stage of its life: digging the materials out of the ground, building it, shipping it, running it, and getting rid of it. An answer that follows the whole lifecycle is worth several times an answer that stops at the plug socket. By the end of this module you should be able to name four stages and say something specific about each. And you should be able to explain the part almost nobody mentions: **why keeping a device longer does more good than being careful with the charger**.

The words that get you the marks 🗂️

Use these and the examiner can see you know the topic rather than guessing at it:

Follow one device through its life 🪜

An interactive activity.

Match each stage to what it costs

Two kinds of energy ⚖️

This is the distinction that separates a grade 9 answer from a grade 5 one. A device uses energy in two quite different ways, and only one of them is on your electricity bill.

Add up one laptop 🔢

An interactive activity.

Now replace it early ➗

An interactive activity.

So what do those two numbers tell you? ❓

Kept for 4 years the laptop costs 70 units per year of use. Replaced after 2, it costs 120. What does the comparison show?

• Making the device dominates, so keeping it longer cuts the yearly cost
• Running the device dominates, so charging habits matter most
• Replacing often is better, since newer models are more efficient
• Nothing much, since both figures describe the same laptop

What happens at the end 🗑️

Disposal is the stage candidates skip, and it is the one with the sharpest edges. **Landfill.** Electronics contain substances that are harmful if they escape into soil and water, so equipment dumped with household rubbish is a genuine hazard rather than just clutter. **Export.** E-waste is sometimes shipped abroad and taken apart by hand, in places where the people doing it have far less protection than a UK worker would. **Recycling.** Devices are glued, soldered and made of dozens of mixed materials, so recovering the metals is possible but fiddly and expensive. Designing something to be taken apart makes far more difference here than sorting it carefully at the end. **And the law is already on this**: the **WEEE regulations** make producers responsible for taking back the equipment they sell, rather than leaving it to whoever bought it.

Why are devices replaced so soon? ✅

Select the TWO things that shorten the replacement cycle.

• The battery is glued in and cannot be replaced when it wears out
• The manufacturer stops issuing software updates for that model
• The device is repaired free of charge under its warranty
• A recycling scheme recovers metals from devices at the end of their life

Build the evaluation 📝

A good evaluation follows the device through its whole life. Making it uses energy and raw materials before it has ever been switched _____. Using it draws electricity, and so do the _____ centres behind the services it connects to. Replacing it early means that manufacturing impact is spread over _____ time, which makes each year of use more costly. Throwing it away creates _____, which is why producers are required by the _____ regulations to take equipment back.

Advising a school 🧭

An interactive activity.

Your turn ✍️

An interactive activity.