Samsung develops solar cell-powered TV remote control, eco-packaging

01 / 05 / 2021

By Marwa Nassar - -

Samsung has worked to develop its TVs to be more sustainable by adopting eco-friendly packaging and solar-cell-powered remote controls.

Samsung consistently pursues innovations that allow it to make its products more environmentally friendly and recently developed a remote control that’s made using renewable plastic and powered by photovoltaic energy rather than disposable batteries.

The company also created an eco-packaging solution that repurposes TV boxes into small-scale pieces of furniture.

How Samsung developed eco-friendly remote controls:

When exploring ways to make remote controls more eco-conscious, Samsung’s developers focused their attention on disposable batteries.

“Supposing that a typical TV is used for around seven years, changing the batteries in its remote just once a year would mean that 14 batteries would get used and thrown out,” said Kwanyoung Kim, an engineer. “If we apply that number to Samsung Electronics’ expected annual global TV sales, it amounts to approximately 99 million discarded batteries. If we apply it to annual TV sales overall, it adds up to nearly 3.1 billion batteries.”

Rather than using disposable batteries in the remote, the engineers decided to go with a self-charging battery instead. Many charging methods were considered, including one that harnessed the kinetic energy that’s created when the remote is shaken, and one that utilized the vibrational energy that’s created when the microphone picks up sounds. As Kim explained, at the end of the day, the optimal charging solution turned out to be a solar cell.

“Even when we aren’t watching our TV or using our remote, we usually have the lights on, except when we are sleeping. This makes light an easily accessible charging solution,” said Kim. “If we substituted disposable batteries with self-charging solar cell batteries like the one we’ve developed, it would amount to reducing up to around 6,000 tons of greenhouse gas emissions per year.”

Remote controls get energy from fluorescent lights as its solar panel takes in photons from light, which react with the electrons in the solar cells to create electricity. The difference between outdoor panels and indoor panels is the spectrum of light being used. “You can’t get as much light indoors compared to sunlight,” added Kim, “so we decided to utilize solar cells that generate energy even in low-light indoor environments.”

Because the amount of electricity that could be created by converting light energy simply wasn’t enough, it would be impossible to generate enough energy for the remote control using solar cells alone. This led the engineers to create a low power remote control instead of searching for ways to increase energy production.

The engineers succeeded in increasing the remote control’s energy efficiency by reducing its power consumption by 86 percent. They did this by taking users’ TV watching patterns, the number of times they pressed their remote control’s buttons, and usage time into account. As Kim explained, the solar cells in the final product “can provide up to 70 percent of the power used by the remote control.”

Making the design of the typical TV remote control, which has remained unchanged until now, more sustainable was no simple task. The color of the solar panel was already determined, so it was difficult to apply various colors to the remote control’s design. One of the team’s key concerns was that the remote control’s panel would need to be raised up high in order to be charged via light. “The solar panel itself is gray, so if we used a color other than black for the battery, it wouldn’t go well with the overall product design,” said Kim. “We also needed the design to encourage consumers to do their part to help the environment.”

“TV remote controls are frequently used products, and our aim is to create the kind of remote that offers users meaningful value, and can be a deciding factor when purchasing a TV,” said Kim.

Samsung also used recycled plastic in remote controls

Solar panel technology isn’t the only thing that makes Samsung’s new remote control especially eco-friendly. Indeed, the plastic material used to create this roughly 40g device is comprised of 28 percent recycled plastic. Samsung has been utilizing recycled plastic in its products for a long time, and has received various certifications for its eco-friendliness. Now, the company has expanded its scope by applying recycled materials to accessories like remote controls as well.

Recycled plastic is enticing because it reuses resources, but not everything about it comes easily. For a start, unit prices go up during the manufacturing process. While Samsung’s VD business does utilize plastic waste that has been collected in Korea, the volume is so small that additional resources need to be imported from overseas. This process causes costs to go up by five percent at the least, and 10 percent at the most.

“The amount of plastics used by Samsung Electronics’ VD Business alone is 250,000 tons,” said Seungsan Han, an engineer and colleague of Kim’s. “Even substituting 10 to 30 percent of that with recycled plastics would require 30,000 to 70,000 tons.”

Despite those costs, Samsung is committed to increasing its usage of recycled materials based on their clear eco-conscious benefits. According to Life Cycle Assessments (LCA), a methodology for assessing environmental impact, products made using approximately 28 percent recycled plastics emit 31 percent less CO2 than products made from non-recycled plastics. In an effort to maximize its use of eco-friendly materials, Samsung also explores ways to utilize waste that has been thrown indiscriminately into the sea. “Twenty percent of the waste that gets thrown into the sea is made of Polyethylene terephthalate,” said Han. “The marine waste plastic obtained here is called OBP (Ocean Bound Plastic) material, which can be applied to the exteriors of electronics. Using OBP in this way helps discourage marine pollution while promoting efforts to protect the environment.”

Samsung also adopted eco-friendly packaging:

“With 2030 being the year when we hope to reach our ultimate achievement, we will keep increasing our use of recycled plastics each year,” Han said.

Increasing products’ efficiency and using recycled materials are clear ways to become more eco-conscious. Now, efforts are being made to address the eco-friendliness of products’ packaging, which would usually be thrown away. Allowing consumers to use their TV’s packaging to make small furniture, the eco-packaging that Samsung introduced in 2020 is a perfect example of this point.

The TVs’ eco-packaging first began as a project of C-Lab, Samsung’s in-house startup incubation program. The C-Lab developers were wondering how best to recycle TVs’ packaging when they noticed that Serif TV users were placing their set-top box, small furniture, and electric devices under their TV as if it were a cabinet. This led them to the idea to use TVs’ strong cardboard packaging to make small, long-lasting furniture, which became the foundation for a new type of ‘eco-packaging.’

Eco-packaging’s manufacturing process is mostly the same as that of other packaging, but also includes the application of a dotted pattern that helps users assemble the packaging into furniture. Although adding the dotted patterns sounds easy and could be achieved by simply printing graphics, the task presented some difficulties as well. The thicknesses and specifications of the cardboard boxes varied slightly by country, which entailed continuous communication with various parties.

“Although we faced many difficulties when making the eco-packaging, we managed to do a great job thanks to the efforts of many people, including the Graphics Team,” said Sungdo Son, a Samsung Electronics designer.

Samsung’s safety- and environmentally conscious eco-packaging has gone beyond lifestyle TVs and is now being applied across the company’s entire 2021 TV lineup. The employees involved in developing the eco-packaging hope that it will eventually reach much more consumers, and will help encourage them to contribute to environmental conservation in any way they can.