The average commercial AV system gets replaced every five to seven years. The carbon and cost embedded in its manufacture, packaging, shipping, and installation don't reset when you issue the next purchase order.

Most AV specifications are built around a single moment in time: Day 1 performance. Does it meet the brief? Does it fit the budget? Does it satisfy the client's current requirements? These are legitimate questions. But they're incomplete ones, and the gap between what they ask and what a sustainable specification needs to ask is where a significant portion of AV's environmental and economic impact quietly accumulates.

Why Lifecycle Thinking Is Missing from Most AV Specs

There are structural reasons why AV specifications default to Day 1 thinking. Client budgets are typically scoped to the installation cost, not the total cost of ownership. Specifications are often written to a performance standard, not a durability standard. The procurement process rewards the lowest compliant bid, which creates no incentive for suppliers to volunteer lifecycle information that might make their product look comparatively expensive in year five.

None of this makes Day 1 thinking wrong, It makes it insufficient.

The GPM P5 Standard's Product perspective addresses this directly. It distinguishes between what a project creates and how that creation performs across its full lifespan. For AV integrators and PMs, the product is the system, and evaluating a system's sustainability means asking questions that extend well past the commissioning ceremony.

The relevant P5 elements here are grouped under the Product Lifespan lens and the Consumption subcategory: Recycling and Reuse, Disposal, Contamination and Pollution, and Waste Generation. These aren't soft, aspirational categories. They're measurable. And for most AV projects, they're currently unmeasured.

The Product Lifespan Lens: What It Measures, What It Reveals

The Product Lifespan lens asks a deceptively simple question: how long will this system actually serve its purpose, and have we designed it to maximize that duration?

In practice, this question breaks into four components.

Manufacturer support horizon: What is the firmware and software support lifecycle for each major component? the support horizon is a sustainability criterion. A processor that goes end-of-support in five years, on a system designed for a ten year fit-out cycle, is a lifecycle liability. The client may not know this on Day 1. By Year 5, it's their problem. In sustainable AV project management, it should be your question on Day Minus 30.

Hardware modularity: Can the system be partially upgraded without full replacement? A display that can be upgraded by changing a compute card is more sustainable than one that requires full replacement when processing power becomes the limiting factor. A DSP with expandable I/O slots has a different lifecycle profile than a fixed-configuration unit. Modularity isn't always available or affordable, but it should be a specified preference, not an afterthought.

Software and firmware path: Can the system's functionality evolve through software, or does feature development require hardware replacement? This matters particularly for control systems, media players, and signal processing equipment. Where software-defined functionality is available, it extends the useful life of the physical installation.

Interoperability: Is the system designed around proprietary lock-in, or does it support open standards that allow component-level replacement without system-wide overhaul? AV over IP infrastructure built on open standards has a meaningfully different lifecycle profile than proprietary switching architectures that require full refresh cycles tied to a single manufacturer's roadmap.

None of these questions change the fundamental specification process. They add a filter "a lifecycle layer" that existing procurement evaluation criteria don't routinely apply.

Specifying for Longevity: A Different Design Conversation

The practical implication is that lifecycle criteria need to enter the specification conversation earlier than they currently do, in the design development phase, when significant technology decisions are still open, rather than during value engineering, when the scope of possible change is narrow.

What does this look like in practice?

RFP and tender criteria: The brief sent to manufacturers and suppliers should include lifecycle questions alongside performance specifications. Minimum firmware support commitment (years). Statement of modular upgrade capability. These questions signal to the supply chain that sustainability criteria are being evaluated and they surface information that clients need to make genuinely informed procurement decisions.

Equivalence comparison: When evaluating competing products, the comparison should include a total cost of ownership analysis alongside the capital cost comparison. A unit that costs 15% more at purchase but carries a ten-year support commitment and modular upgrade path may have a substantially lower total cost and a substantially lower environmental impact than the cheaper alternative that requires replacement in five years. This calculation belongs in the specification report.

Specification notes: The specification document should include a lifecycle assumptions section, that documents the expected service life of major system components, the firmware support horizon at time of specification, and any known obsolescence risks. This creates a reference point for the client's long-term facilities planning and a documented basis for any future refresh conversations.

For consultants, this is part of the five-year energy and lifecycle projection that the @AVIXA Sustainability Advisory Group Consultant Best Practice Guide already identifies as a core deliverable. For integrators, it's part of the lifecycle planning that their own Best Practice Guide flags as a differentiator and a professional responsibility.

Circularity in AV: Reuse, Refurbishment, and Responsible Disposal

The Recycling and Reuse lens and the Disposal and Waste Generation lenses address what happens at the other end of the product lifecycle and increasingly, at the beginning of a new one.

Circular economy thinking in AV means tow things at the project level:

Design for disassembly: When specifying a system, consider how its components will be recovered at end of life. Equipment with accessible, clearly documented disassembly and recovery pathways produces less waste. Systems with hazardous materials certain display technologies, battery backup units, older signal processing components require specific disposal routes that should be identified at specification, not discovered at decommissioning. 

Reuse and refurbishment pathways: Not every system replacement creates genuine end-of-life waste. Equipment decommissioned from a corporate refresh project may have significant remaining value for smaller clients, for education, for community organizations. An integrator with a documented refurbishment and reuse pathway creates value from that equipment rather than routing it to a waste stream. This is a business model question as much as a sustainability one.

The Contamination and Pollution lens is the one that most AV practitioners haven't had reason to think about until a display containing mercury fluorescent backlighting, or a UPS battery system, ends up in a skip because nobody identified the specialist disposal route. P5 makes this a documented check, not an accidental discovery.

Let me know your thoughts on this, and wait for the next article "part 2 from the Product Perspective"  that covers the other half of the product picture: what happens after handover; serviceability, upgradability, and how procurement decisions shape a system's circularity potential.