Consumer electronics contain a broad spectrum of materials whose production requires water and potentially discharges contaminants into the water supply, exacerbating freshwater scarcity and pollution. These water impacts have not yet been fully studied, as much of the literature on consumer electronics focuses on supply chain energy or carbon footprint. This study evaluates life cycle water consumption and degradation impacts associated with extracting and producing base, precious, hazardous, and critical metals that are typically found in electronic products. Water impacts were analyzed for individual metals and for the representative material profile of smartphones and laptop computers to identify “hotspots” for future improvement. Results indicate that, at the level of individual materials, precious metals have the highest impacts, due to water consumed directly for mining operations and indirectly for energy production, and water degradation attributed to metal emissions during mine tailings management. At the product level, precious metals also have the highest contribution per smartphone, whereas aluminum has a higher contribution per laptop, accounting for about 40% of the total water scarcity footprint. On the other hand, for water quality impacts, precious metals are responsible for the highest contributions for both products. Scenarios are evaluated to assess improvement potential associated with product design changes, including alternate supply chains, material substitution, and use of recycled content. The greatest potential opportunities for reducing water impacts were sourcing metals from lower water scarcity regions (19% reduction over the baseline water scarcity footprint) and increasing recycled content to the maximum theoretical potential (20% reduction).

消费电子产品包含多种材料，其生产需要用水，并可能将污染物排放到供水系统中，从而加剧淡水短缺和污染。这些水的影响尚未得到充分研究，因为许多关于消费电子产品的文献都集中在供应链能源或碳足迹上。本研究评估了与提取和生产电子产品中常见的贱金属、贵金属、危险金属和关键金属相关的生命周期耗水量和降解影响。分析了单个金属以及智能手机和笔记本电脑的代表性材料轮廓的水影响，以确定未来改进的“热点”。结果表明，在个别材料层面，贵金属的影响最大，由于直接用于采矿作业和间接用于能源生产的水，以及尾矿管理过程中金属排放导致的水降解。在产品层面，贵金属对每台智能手机的贡献也最高，而铝对每台笔记本电脑的贡献更高，约占总水资源短缺足迹的 40%。另一方面，对于水质影响，贵金属对两种产品的贡献最大。评估情景以评估与产品设计更改相关的改进潜力，包括替代供应链、材料替代和回收内容的使用。