Reminder: Manuscripts for Special Edition of Challenges Due 12/31/15

challenges-logoManuscripts are still being accepted for the special issue of the journal Challenges, entitled “Electronic Waste–Impact, Policy and Green Design.” 

From the issue’s rationale:

“Electronics are at the heart of an economic system that has brought many out of poverty and enhanced quality of life. In Western society in particular, our livelihoods, health, safety, and well being are positively impacted by electronics. However, there is growing evidence that our disposal of electronics is causing irreparable damage to the planet and to human health, as well as fueling social conflict and violence.

While global demand for these modern gadgets is increasing, policy to handle the increased volumes of electronic waste has not kept pace. International policy governing safe transfer, disposal, reclamation, and reuse of electronic waste is nonexistent or woefully lacking. Where laws do exist about exporting and importing hazardous waste, they are routinely circumvented and enforcement is spotty at best. While European Union countries lead the way in responsible recycling of electronic and electrical devices under various EU directives, most industrialized nations do not have such policies. In the U.S., for example, most electronic waste is still discarded in landfills or ground up for scrap.

It is imperative that we consider how green design practices can address the growing electronic waste problem. This special issue is meant to do just that and spur discussions on how electronic products can become greener and more sustainable.”

If you are interested in submitting a paper for this special issue, please send a title and short abstract (about 100 words) to the Challenges Editorial Office at challenges@mdpi.com, indicating the special issue for which it is to be considered. If the proposal is considered appropriate for the issue, you will be asked to submit a full paper. Complete instructions for authors and an online submission form for the completed manuscripts are available on the Challenges web site at http://www.mdpi.com/journal/challenges/special_issues/electronic-waste#info. The deadline for manuscript submissions is December 31, 2015. Questions may be addressed to co-guest editor Joy Scrogum.

ISTC Receives Gold Level Recognition from the State Electronics Challenge

SEIgold The Illinois Sustainable Technology Center (ISTC), the parent organization for the Sustainable Electronics Initative (SEI), has received Gold Level recognition from the State Electronics Challenge for activities in 2014. The State Electronics Challenge (SEC) is a free, voluntary program for non-federal public sector organizations (e.g. schools, local governments, universities, libraries, etc.) and non-profit organizations, which encourages responsible management of office equipment via more sustainable purchasing, reducing the impacts of devices during use, and managing obsolete electronics in an environmentally safe way. Participants, or “partners” as they’re referred to in the program, can elect to focus efforts on one or more life cycle phases: purchasing, use, and end-of-life management. Guidance on addressing impacts in these life cycle phases is provided via the SEC web site, partners-only webinars, and direct assistance from SEC staff members. Partners are not required to perform any given activity, but if they wish to apply to the optional recognition program, there is a checklist of activities that must be completed to achieve different recognition levels.

Partners are eligible for recognition for their accomplishments as follows:

  • Gold recognition: completed General Requirements & all activities in 3 lifecycle phases
  • Silver recognition: completed General Requirements & completed all activities in 2 lifecycle phases
  • Bronze recognition: completed General Requirements & all activities in 1 lifecycle phase

ISTC was in fact the first organization in IL to become a SEC partner, back in 2011, but 2014 was the first year for which it sought recognition for its activities, after having developed a written policy for purchase, use, and disposal of its IT equipment as part of its internal sustainability committee’s efforts. Of SEC’s 150 current partners, only nine are from Illinois, and, of those, just two earned recognition at any level in 2014. See the complete list of 2014 Partner Award recipients on the SEC web site. As you can see from the picture included in this post, the recognition plaque is appropriately made out of recycled circuit boards.

One of the benefits of being an SEC partner is the receipt of an “environmental sustainability report” for the year, with a summary of the environmental benefits of your organization’s efforts, in easy to understand equivalencies. For example, in ISTC’s 2014 report, we can see that the reduction in energy use resulting from our purchasing, use, and reuse and recycling efforts was equivalent to the amount of electricity to power 25 homes/year. To see an example of the report partners receive, see ISTC’s full Environmental Sustainability Report from SEC for calendar year 2014.

If you wish to learn more about the State Electronics Challenge, don’t miss the upcoming free SEC webinar, “Introduction to the State Electronics Challenge” Tuesday, May 19, 2015 from 2:00 PM – 3:00 PM CDT. You can register for the webinar online at https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/4400751674919799810.

State Electronics Challenge Webinars: 11/18 Recording Available, 12/2 Webinar Scheduled

SECIntroSlideCaptureOn November 18, 2014, SEI and the Great Lakes Regional Pollution Prevention Roundtable (GLRPPR)  co-sponsored a webinar, “Introduction to the State Electronics Challenge.”

Lynn Rubinstein gave an overview of the State Electronics Challenge, a voluntary national program, free of charge and open to any state, tribal, regional, or local government agency, as well as any K-12 school or non-profit organization. The SEC promotes environmental stewardship of computers, monitors, and imaging equipment — from purchasing green office equipment through power management, paper use reduction, and responsible end-of-life management — resulting in measurable reductions in energy, greenhouse gases, solid and hazardous waste, and associated costs. The goal of the webinar was to illustrate how your organization can join the Challenge and benefit from the program’s proven free technical assistance, action plan, implementation tools, and environmental benefit calculations. Lynn provided information and examples specific to Illinois and the rest of the Great Lakes region of the US, for the information of members of both GLRPPR and the UI Sustainable Electronics Campus Consortium.

The Illinois Sustainable Technology Center (ISTC), SEI’s parent organization, has joined the SEC, as has Engineering IT Shared Services here on the UI campus.

If you wish to learn how your organization or unit can join, view the archived webinar, along with slides and links to supporting materials on the GLRPPR web site. Links are also available on the UI Sustainable Electronics Campus Consortium page.  You may also wish to register for a similar introductory webinar, scheduled for December 2, 2014 for 1-2 PM CST.

Pollution Prevention Week: E-waste and the World’s Most Polluted Places

Happy P2 Week, Everyone! If you’ve never heard of this celebration, P2 stands for Pollution Prevention, and P2 Week is celebrated from September 15-21, 2014. P2 Week is in fact celebrated annually during the third week in September, and according to the National Pollution Prevention Roundtable (NPPR), it’s “an opportunity for individuals, businesses, and government to emphasize and highlight their pollution prevention and sustainability activities and achievements, expand current pollution prevention efforts, and commit to new actions.” Check out their site and P2 Week Tool Kit, as well as the US EPA’s Pollution Prevention Week page for tips on preventing pollution at home and work.

Top Ten Toxic Threats Report CoverPreventing pollution is of particular importance when it comes to considerations of sustainable electronics design, manufacture, use, and disposal, given that an annual report by the Blacksmith Institute and Green Cross Switzerland included for the first time in 2013, Agbogbloshie, in Accra, Ghana, as one of the ten most polluted places on Earth.  The Top Ten Toxic Threats: Cleanup, Progress, and Ongoing Challenges 2013 edition “presents a new list of the top ten polluted places and provides updates on sites previously published by Blacksmith and Green Cross. A range of pollution sources and contaminants are cited, including hexavalent chromium from tanneries and heavy metals released from smelting operations. The report estimates that sites like those listed in the top ten pose a health risk to more than 200 million people in low- and medium-income countries.” Other notoriously contaminated sites on the list include Chernobyl in the Ukraine, the Citarum River in Indonesia, and the heavy concentration of tanneries in Hazaribagh, Bangladesh.

The Agbogbloshie site has been the focus of a lot of recent media attention due to the extensive environmental degradation caused there by informal electronics recycling; it is the second largest electronic waste processing site in West Africa. If you would like to see the extent of the pollution, and get a feel for the lives of the people who work in the area, some of whom are children, I recommend the film Terra Blight. (See my previous post on this film’s inclusion in a sustainability film festival on campus, and the LibGuide that accompanies the films from the festival. The film can be checked out from the Prairie Research Institute Library by those on the UI campus or via interlibrary loan.) A number of striking photo essays have also been published, including one earlier this year in the Guardian by photographer Kevin McElvaney. The film and photos show us the stark consequences of endless manufacturing advances and consumer quests for upgrades. Gadgets that aren’t responsibly recycled may end up in landfills, or worse–in places like Agbogbloshie where the poor try to earn an honest living processing the waste to salvage precious materials using whatever means are available, including fire or rocks to hammer open lead-laden monitors.

It is the lead spilled into the environment through informal recycling that earns Agbogbloshie its place on the Top Ten Toxic Threats list, though certainly other toxins are released from the electronics processed there. From the report’s highlights: “Agbogbloshie is a vibrant informal settlement with considerable overlap between industrial, commercial, and residential zones. Heavy metals released in the burning process easily migrate into homes, food markets, and other public areas. Samples taken around the perimeter of Agbogbloshie, for instance, found a presence of lead levels as high as 18,125 ppm in soil. The US EPA standard for lead in soil is 400 ppm. Another set of samples taken from five workers on the site found aluminum, copper, iron, and lead levels above ACGIH TLV guidelines. For instance, it was found that one volunteer had aluminum exposure levels of 17 mg/m3 compared with the ACGIH TLV guideline of 1.0 mg/m3.”

Lest you think the answer to this tragedy lies exclusively in preventing export of unwanted electronics from the first world to the third, increasingly developing countries are becoming sources of e-waste themselves. Indeed, the Top Ten Toxic Threats report notes “Ghana annually imports around 215,000 tons of secondhand consumer electronics from abroad, primarily from Western Europe, and generates another 129,000 tons of e-waste every year.” Even if it weren’t true that developing countries are also sources of e-waste, cutting off certain flows of such waste ultimately shifts problems from one place to another, resulting in different, yet still complicated issues. The leaded glass in CRTs, for example, is becoming increasingly difficult to process, as the demand for its reuse in the creation of new CRT monitors is dwindling. Currently only one manufacturer of CRT monitors remains, in India. Within the US states struggle to find ways to deal with massive amounts of CRT glass from obsolete TVs and computer monitors, leading to controversy over proposed uses (such as alternative daily cover material in landfills) and nightmarish stories of CRT glass stockpiles being left for authorities to manage after recycling operations go out of business.

The point is that the only long-term solution to stopping environmental degradation in places like Agbogbloshie, and the struggles to find safe and widely accepted end-of-life management options for electronics and all their components is to practice true pollution prevention–through source reduction, modification of production processes, promotion of non-toxic or less toxic materials, conservation of natural resources, and reuse of materials to prevent their inclusion in waste streams. This will by no means be easy, nor will the changes necessary happen overnight. But it’s work that must be done, and done by ALL of us, in whatever way we interact with the electronics product lifecycle. Designers and manufacturers must learn and practice green chemistry and green engineering. Consumers must become aware of the sustainability issues surrounding electronics and make more informed choices–including buying less by extending the useful lives of devices as much as possible. And recyclers, policy makers, entrepreneurs, manufacturers, and consumers must all work to ensure that materials from products that have reached the end of their first intended life be collected and reclaimed for use in new processes. Electronics are something we all use, at home and at work, in one form or another. And through images and statistics like those from Agbogbloshie, we understand that environmental and social impacts of our industrial world do not truly go “away” any more than waste itself does.

To learn more about pollution prevention, visit the Great Lakes Regional Pollution Prevention Roundtable (GLRPPR) web site. GLRPPR is posting P2 week information all week on its blog, including two posts contributed by SEI related to electronics. Check out the GLRPPR blog on Tuesday (9/16/14) for source reduction tips for electronics consumers, and on Thursday (9/18/14) for information on flame retardants and electronics.

View the 2013 International Sustainable Electronics Competition Winning Videos

See the previous post for the press release announcing the winners of the 2013 International Sustainable Electronics Competition, including project descriptions. The winning videos are featured on the competition web site and the SEI YouTube Channel. For your convenience, see the embedded player below. Congratulations to the winners and to all this year’s participants. You are all winners for considering the environmental and social impacts of electronic devices and for considering possible solutions to green various aspects of their product life cycles. Keep monitoring the competition and SEI web sites for information on future competitions or similar educational initiatives.

 

Champaign County Electronics Collection Event October 12, 2013

This post was written by ISTC staff member Kirsten Walker.


Do you have electronics piling up in your garage or other storage area? Wonder what you can do with them? You are in luck. The Champaign County Electronics Collection event is coming up on October 12, 2013. This is a free drop off for specific items such as: televisions, computers and laptops, computer monitors, keyboards, mice, cables, printers and scanners, radio and stereos, VCRs and DVD Players, mobile phones, office electronics, digital camera, communication devices, microwaves, and gaming systems.  There is a limit of 10 items per resident.  Many recyclers have stopped accepting TVs and computer monitors because of the problem of proper recycling of the CRT (leaded glass) in those units, so this event is a perfect opportunity to get rid of those items now. The event is being held at 3202 Apollo Drive (News-Gazette Distribution Center) in Champaign from 8 a.m. to 12 noon and will be held rain or shine. If you participate in the county’s recycling survey, you could enter to win a $50 Amazon gift card. Visit http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/SBR5MXB to complete the survey. For more information on the Illinois landfill ban, please see the Illinois IEPA website.

There are other businesses that accept electronics during the year including: Goodwill (912 W. Anthony Drive, Champaign, 217.359.8729 and  111 Calvin Street, Savoy, 217.290.1864), Habitat for Humanity ReStore (119 E. University Avenue, Champaign, 217.355.6460), Marco Steel* (302 S. Market Street, Champaign, 217.352.4707), Mack’s Twin City Recycling* (2808 N. Lincoln Avenue, Urbana, 217.328.2100), Green Purpose* (807 Pioneer Street, Champaign, 217.954.1450), Best Buy* (2117 N. Prospect Avenue, Champaign, 217.352.8883), Office Depot* (111 Convenience Center, Champaign, 217.373.5202), Staples* ( 2005 N. Prospect Avenue, Champaign, (217.373.8490). There are restriction on items accepted at locations with an asterisk (*), so it is advisable to call first.

Registration Now Open for 2013 International Sustainable Electronics Competition

International E-Waste Design Competition LogoThe Sustainable Electronics Initiative at the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center is pleased to announce that registration is open for the 2013 International Sustainable Electronics Competition. Participants will explore ideas to address the social and environmental impacts of electronics, and contribute to the body of knowledge that advances the practice of environmentally responsible product design for current and future technology products. Entries can be made in one of two categories“Product” and “Non-product”–with criteria that incorporate the ideas of reuse and prevention throughout. This allows for students of all disciplines to participate in ways to reduce the generation of electronic waste and extend electronic product life cycles.

Teamwork across disciplines, backgrounds, and ages is encouraged. One entry per person or team (5 person maximum) is allowed. The competition is open to current college and university students as well as recent graduates from universities around the world. Registration is free. Expert jurors award cash prizes to the top three projects in each category. The submission deadline is November 1, 2013 at 4:59 Central time. Winners will be announced on December 5th.

Entries must include an original video composition uploaded to YouTube, along with supporting materials uploaded to the registration page of the competition web site. See the competition web site, www.ewaste.illinois.edu for details on registration requirements.

Good luck with your entries!

Juror Spotlight – Lynn Rubinstein

This post was written by ISTC staff member Kirsten Walker.

The International Sustainable Electronics Competition would like to welcome new juror, Lynn Rubinstein, Executive Director of the Northeast Recycling Council and Founder/Program Manager of the State Electronics Challenge. Lynn has been actively engaged in electronics recycling issues for more than 15 years. The  State Electronics Challenge encourages state, tribal, regional, and local governments, including schools to responsibly manage office equipment by purchasing greener office equipment, reduction the impact  during use, and managing obsolete electronics in an environmentally safe way.

Lynn’s dedication to the area of recycling and electronics is apparent as she is also the co-founder of the Electronics Recycling  Coordination Clearinghouse and is a founding Board member and Chair of  R2 Solutions. It is this dedication as well as her Juris Doctor from Southwestern University School of Law that we find so valuable to the competition and we are looking forward to Lynn’s perspective on this year’s entries.

Competition ‘Veteran’ from University of Limerick Pursues Interest in E-Waste Reuse

This post was written by ISTC staff member Kirsten Walker.

Damian Coughlan is no stranger to the International Sustainable Electronics Competition. For two years in a row, the now Ph.D. researcher at the University of Limerick has won a Silver award for his entry Loopbook (2012) and as part of a bigger team with the entry Laptop Design for the Future (2011).

We recently caught up with Damian to see how the competition has affected his educational and career aspirations.  Coughlan stated, “Receiving the Silver Award in this competition has had a huge impact on my current circumstances. Since graduating with my degree in August 2012 I have received a scholarship to continue research towards a PhD. The funding is being provided by the Irish Research Council and the European Recycling Platform. I had mentioned the award from 2012 as part of my application and I have no doubt that these awards helped me considerably. I have now started the PhD in Sustainability since October 2012. I visited TU Delft in the past week to gather some feedback for my research and my presentation featured my awards which definitely helped raise my profile. My current research is looking at the subject of electronic waste [and] the possibilities of reusing the waste in a different context.”

This year, as an optional extension of the competition, the UIUC Technology Entrepreneur Center  has offered to provide constructive  feedback to students who opt-in as part of their submission. This advice is not a means of taking a concept to market, but is offered as a resource for entrants to explore furthering their concept with appropriate resources. When we asked Damian about his plans for Loopbook, he stated, “Regarding the Loopbook, I had considered the option of bringing it to market but currently I feel there are too many barriers to be overcome by technology before the Loopbook could be ready as a consumer product. However I do still think that it could be a great idea if it could be fully developed. I do think the option of bringing a possible product to market would be great outlet for the competition and innovation.”

We wish Damian the best in his Ph.D. studies and research. We know he will be someone to look out for in the future of innovative computing technologies.

As a reminder, registration for this year’s competition opens on September 1, 2013. See the competition web site for complete details. Registration is free, and cash prizes are awarded.

Competition Inspiration: Digitizer

The 2013 International Sustainable Electronics Competition begins in less than a month. The spirit of this competition is to prompt the industrialized world to dialogue about product designs and non-product concepts for environmentally responsible green computing and entertainment. The goals of this competition are to learn about ways to extend the useful lifecycle of electronic products, reuse electronic scrap for new and productive means, explore ideas to address the social and environmental impacts of electronics, and contribute to the body of knowledge that advances the practice of environmentally responsible product design for current and future technology products. We invite you to create a broad range of concepts and innovations to address these issues. Engineering, design, sustainability, or business knowledge will be helpful, but are not required for success in this competition. We encourage participation from interested students and recent graduates from any academic discipline. See the “Rules” section of the competition web site for complete details. Registration is free, and cash prizes will be awarded.

In the coming weeks, we’ll be featuring some of the winning videos from previous years’ competitions as inspiration for those of you who may be considering entering. Below, check out a concept called “Digitizer” for making a film camera function like a digital camera when desired. The unit was also conceived to be manufactured from e-waste, thus preventing the generation of e-waste by keeping older cameras from being discarded, and/or giving analog cameras a dual function, and reusing scrap that might otherwise be landfilled. This concept was 1st place in the “Reuse” Category in 2012 and was submitted by J. Makai Catudio and Ryan Barnes. (Note that the categories have changed this year. See our previous blog post and the “Categories” descriptions on the competition web site.)

What can you imagine as a solution to the environmental and social problems related to electronic device design, production, use, and end-of-life management? See more concepts from previous winners on the SEI You Tube channel.

And for those of you who are not eligible to enter, if you find ideas like Digitizer inspiring and want to support SEI’s efforts to encourage students around the world to consider the impacts of our ubiquitous electronics, consider making a donation in support of the competition. Your gift will go toward cash prizes and program administration, and will be acknowledged on the “Sponsors” page of the competition web site. Questions can be directed to Joy Scrogum.