Category: Sustainable Product Design

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2013 International Sustainable Electronics Competition Winners Announced (ISTC Press Release)

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One Hazelwood Drive, Champaign, IL 61820
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Joy Scrogum, Co-coordinator, Sustainable Electronics Initiative, ISTC, Champaign IL (217) 333-8948

 

 

NINE STUDENTS HONORED FOR FRESH IDEAS IN SUSTAINABLE ELECTRONICS

International Sustainable Electronics Competition Awards 2013 Winners

CHAMPAIGN, IL –  (Dec. 6, 2013) Old smart phones don’t have to be doomed to silence in a drawer or a landfill. According to two winners of the 2013 International Sustainable Electronics Competition the phones can keep track of your cattle, or be tiled together to form large-scale electronic displays.

The winning entries were announced in a ceremony on Thursday, Dec. 5, at the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center (ISTC), a division of the Prairie Research Institute, at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Nine students on four teams from around the world were awarded prizes for their ideas on the beneficial reuse of electronics to prevent e-waste generation.

The Sustainable Electronics Initiative (SEI) at ISTC has held the annual competition since 2009 to prompt dialogue about the environmental and social impacts of electronics and to contribute to the body of knowledge that advances the practice of environmentally responsible product design, manufacture, use, and disposal for electronics. The competition is open to college and university students and recent graduates.

The winners in the Product Category (items intended for sale) were:

  • E-waste Meets Farming, smart phones remanufactured as cow collars (Platinum, $3,000) Michael Van Dord, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia;
  • Mion, a multi-purpose dynamo lighting system (Gold, $2,000) Mikenna Tansley, Jiayi Li, Fren Mah, Russell Davidson, and Kapil Vachhar from the University of Alberta, Canada;
  • Cellscreen, a large scale display system made from old phone displays (Silver, $1,000) Sam Johnston, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia.

One platinum level ($3,000) winner was named in the Non-product Category (concepts valuable for artistic, educational, policy, or similar content):

  • ENERGENCIA, an educational program based on a children’s game kit encouraging the use of recycled materials and renewable energy concepts by Stephanie Vázquez and Pedro Baños of Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey Campus Puebla, Mexico.

“The world must find ways to end the tide of e-waste in the environment,” said Craig Boswell, U of I graduate and president of HOBI International, an ISO 14001 certified electronics recycling and asset management company. “This competition, and these brilliant young winners, help us advance the dialog about environmentally responsible product design, manufacture, use, and disposal of electronics,” he added.

Boswell was one of an expert panel of six judges consisting of industry professionals, recycling experts, and the competition founder, William Bullock, professor of Industrial Design, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. The cash prizes were funded by donations from Arrow Electronics, Professional Field Services, and ISTC.

Other jurors were: Jason Linnell, executive director, National Center of Electronics Recycling; Bill Olson, director, Office of Sustainability and Stewardship, Motorola Mobility, LLC; Lynn Rubinstein, executive director, Northeast Recycling Council; and Kyle Wiens, CEO, iFixt and Dozuki.

Joe Verrengia, director of Corporate Social Responsibility for Arrow Electronics, participated in the ceremony, noting “We understand more than ever now that the end of life of all of those electronics is often very short. We need to come up with something better to deal with that. Competitions and incubators can develop those ideas that hopefully help the world, help Arrow, and maybe be a source of really smart new workers in the future.”

The videos of the winning entries are featured on the SEI and the competition web sites, ewaste.illinois.edu, and sustainelectronics.illinois.edu. They will also be available on the SEI You Tube channel, youtube.com/seiatistc.

See below for a more complete description of the winners and their entries.

Product Category

Platinum ($3,000): E-waste Meets Farming. This project tackles e-waste through the reuse of discarded but internally (circuit board and CPU) functioning smart phones in the manufacture of cow collars. A cow collar is a device worn by cattle on dairy farms which can store information about the individual animal wearing it. It can also send that information to a central hub to be backed up, and communicate with machinery on the farm so that the cow is fed correctly and milked for the correct amount of time, etc. Cow collars can warn farmers of sickness or other health concerns for individual animals by monitoring activity and conditions through the inclusion of a GPS and accelerometers. The advantage of reusing smart phones in cow collars is that all the necessary components are assembled in a very compact and highly functional way. The phone has GPS, accelerometers, wireless technology, printed circuit boards, and software compatibility. Furthermore phones damaged beyond the point of being internally functional can also be used for the manufacture of cow collars, by being recycled via normal streams. The resulting materials, such as plastics, can be used in the construction of casing and external collar components. This concept was submitted by an undergraduate in product design engineering, Michael Van Dord, from Swinburne University of Technology in Australia.

Gold ($2,000): Mion. Mion is a multi-purpose, dynamo-powered bike light for people living in disadvantaged communities. Their lack of an adequate source of lighting makes it difficult to perform evening tasks, including children’s studies, resulting in a significant barrier to human development. Mion is designed with consideration for the people living in these communities and who are lacking traditional furniture. Its organic form provides multiple lighting angles when placed on a flat surface, one focused and one ambient. This allows for optimal lighting, giving the user an option between more open or focused coverage. Mion uses the energy provided by a dynamo: a small motor that generates electricity using the propulsion of a bicycle wheel. The dynamo uses rotating coils of wire and magnetic fields to convert mechanical rotation into a pulsing direct electric current through Michael Faraday’s law of induction. In the long term, a dynamo is both cheaper and more ecological than a battery-powered system. When Mion is clamped onto the bike frame, it uses a direct energy source from the dynamo, charging its reserve AA batteries while also having the ability to provide light during the evening hours. Its detachable clamp allows the user to bring the lighting fixture wherever needed. In addition, the reserve, rechargeable AA batteries, may be removed and used within other products. These batteries become a significant object in themselves as the lack of reliable electricity can lead to other issues with day-to-day activities. Each part of Mion is made from recycled electronic waste. The internal components of the light and dynamo are repurposed parts from old electronics such as desktop computers, cameras, and cell phones (including LEDs, magnets, copper wire, and gears in the dynamo). Both the housing unit for the light and the dynamo casing are made of recycled plastics which can be reclaimed from electronic devices. Mion was submitted by a group of design students (Mikenna Tansley, Jiayi Li, Fren Mah, Russell Davidson, and Kapil Vachhar) from the University of Alberta in Canada.

Silver ($1,000): Cellscreen. The Cellscreen is a large-scale, coarse display intended to function as an advertisement or public display. The Cellscreen itself can be thought of as a tile which forms the base unit from which many different configurations can be made. Each tile is comprised of disused cell phone displays which form the display matrix. The premise is that a run of tiles can be produced from one set of screens at a time due to the large volume of cell phones that are disposed of. For example, there might be a range of tiles comprised entirely of iPhone 3g screens. Grouping screens by type is intended to circumvent any issues that might arise from display quality when mixing and matching screens from different manufactures and for compatibility. Cellscreen tiles comprised from older devices, such as early color screens, might be well suited to large scale advertising whereas those from newer devices with high pixel density and touch functions might be suited to other applications, such as information kiosks. Cellscreen is targeted toward manufacturers and suppliers of cell phones encouraging them to reclaim their obsolete products for reuse in a new product. Cellscreen was submitted by Sam Johnston, an undergraduate in product design from Swinburne University of Technology in Australia.

Non-Product Category

Platinum ($3,000): ENERGENCIA. ENERGENCIA is an educational program based on a  game kit in which children can build their own toys using recyclable materials, reusable electronic devices, and renewable energy concepts to create projects that can move, turn lights on, etc. These projects employ reusable, reclaimed electronic components like small engines supplied in the game kit. The other recyclable materials like cardboard, cans, and plastic bottles can be obtained by children themselves to complete a project. Through the projects made possible by the game kit children learn about alternative energy sources and develop environmental awareness and positive environmental behaviors. The students who submitted this concept developed theories related to the ideal age range of children for which this kit would be effective, and they investigated these ideas through a hands-on workshop for children conducted in cooperation with teachers from schools at the American School of Puebla. This concept was submitted by undergraduates Stephanie Vázquez and Pedro Baños of Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey Campus Puebla in Mexico.

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The Prairie Research Institute at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is the home of the State Scientific Surveys: Illinois Natural History Survey, Illinois State Archaeological Survey, Illinois State Geological Survey, Illinois State Water Survey, and Illinois Sustainable Technology Center. For over 160 years the Surveys have applied cutting-edge science and expertise to keep Illinois’ economy, environment and people prosperous and secure. www.prairie.illinois.edu 

 

The Illinois Sustainable Technology Center (ISTC) was established in 1985 and joined the Prairie Research Institute with the other surveys in 2008.  Its mission is to encourage and assist citizens, businesses, and government agencies to prevent pollution, conserve natural resources, and reduce waste to protect human health and the environment of Illinois and beyond.  www.istc.illinois.edu

 

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2013 International Sustainable Electronics Competition Awards Ceremony/Webinar, 12/5

Another year of the International Sustainable Electronics Competition (formerly the International E-waste Design Competition) has passed, and the jurors have completed their evaluations of this year’s entries. This year’s winners will be announced at a ceremony at the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center (ISTC), the host agency for the Sustainable Electronics Initiative (SEI), on December 5, 2013 from 12:00 – 1:00 p.m. CST. Brief descriptions of the winning projects will be given and the associated project videos will be shown. Cash prizes will awarded to winning teams in two categories: Product and Non-Product.

For those who cannot attend in person, the ceremony will be simultaneously broadcast as a webinar. This webinar will also be archived for later viewing on the ISTC Sustainability Seminars page. To register for the webinar, go to https://www4.gotomeeting.com/register/703576527.

SEI wishes to thank all of the students who participated. All of the participants are winners in the sense that they are actively thinking about ways to solve real world problems and foster a more sustainable system for the design, production, use, and management of electronic devices. It is always inspiring to see students from around the world applying their ingenuity to issues that affect the global community.

This year’s winning videos will be posted to the competition web site after the ceremony, and will also be feature on the SEI YouTube channel.

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Sustainable Electronics Funding Opportunity: EPA P3 Program, Deadline 12/17/13

P3 Program Logo“P3” is the US Environmental Protection Agency’s “People, Prosperity, and Planet Student Design Competition for Sustainability.” As stated on the program website, this is “a unique college competition for designing solutions for a sustainable future. P3 offers students quality hands-on experience that brings their classroom learning to life. The competition has two phases. For the first phase of the competition, teams are awarded a $15,000 grant to develop their idea. They bring the design in April to the National Sustainable Design Expo in Washington, DC to compete for the P3 Award and a grant of $90,000 to take their design to real world application.” Teams are meant to be interdisciplinary and composed of undergraduates and/or graduates, and the main goals of the program are to engage future scientists and members of industry in innovation for sustainability, while fostering the demonstration and development of sustainable technologies.

The current solicitation closes December 17, 2013. EPA anticipates funding approximately 40 grants for Phase I under this RFA. The projected EPA award amount for each Phase I grant is up to $15,000 for its one year duration. The current Request for Applications is available here, and guidance on how to apply is available at http://www.epa.gov/ncer/p3/apply/index.html. Application materials and a list of EPA contacts are available at http://www.epa.gov/ncer/rfa/2014/2014_p3.html#Materials.

The program has been around for several years (see the archive of past P3 projects on the program website), but few P3 projects have focused specifically on sustainable electronics issues. Some notable examples include a New Jersey Institute of Technology proposal for development of a “National Electronics Product Reuse and Recycling System,” and the recent Purdue University project related to “Recycling of Liquid Crystal Displays for Maximum Resource Recovery.” (Dr. Fu Zhao recently visited the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center (ISTC) to present a seminar/webinar on the LCD monitor recycling project; the archived presentation, slides and abstract are available in the ISTC Sustainability Seminars archive.) Other projects have focused on creating more energy efficient electronic devices, such as the East Central University project on “Making a Solid State Organic Photovoltaic Cell More Efficient and Economically Viable.” Still others are tangentially relevant to a more sustainable system for electronics because they focus on issues like consumer awareness (e.g. the University of Michigan–Ann Arbor “AWARE” concept for informing purchasing decisions) or using electronics to help solve real world sustainability problems (e.g. concepts for LED lighting applications in developing countries, like those proposed by student teams from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign or the Rochester Institute of Technology).

As Dr. Zhao pointed out in his presentation on the Purdue LCD monitor recycling project, there is great potential for more P3 teams to focus on sustainable electronics issues. In fact, if you read the current P3 Request for Applications closely, a list of research areas is listed and applications are expected to address one or more of these areas. See Part E under Section I: Funding Opportunity Description at http://www.epa.gov/ncer/rfa/2014/2014_p3.html#Synopsis. One of these areas is “Materials and Chemicals” and examples of areas of interest listed within this overall research area include “Projects that may reduce electronics waste or promote substitution and/or recovery of rare earth rare earth elements,” “Less toxic flame retardants,” and in general the redesign of products to use less resources in production and consumption, use more environmentally benign materials, etc. So there is a current desire from the EPA to see applications focusing on more sustainable electronic product design, manufacture, consumption, and end-of-life management. Faculty researchers and students interested in these issues should consider applying for the current P3 Awards cycle, or planning to submit applications in future cycles.

If you apply and receive an award, tell us about your project in the “Comments” section of this post. SEI would love to follow your progress.

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Webinar: Recycling and Upcycling of Electronic Waste

Join us for a webinar on Thursday, September 26, 2013, 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM CDT. This webinar will be broadcast live from Toronto, Canada. It may be viewed at your computer by registering at https://www4.gotomeeting.com/register/198927695, or you can watch the webinar in the Stephen J. Warner Conference Room at ISTC (One Hazelwood Dr., Champaign) or in Room  218 Mechanical Engineering Building at UIUC (1206 W Green St. in Urbana).

Jeff Mendez, Global Communications Director, ERS International, will discuss “Recycling and Upcycling of Electronic Waste.”

Abstract: Electronic waste is a growing problem nationally and globally.  As a leader in environmentally responsible electronics recycling, ERS International develops and utilizes new technologies which allow them to obtain maximum recovery value of electronics via electrostatic separation & particle classification.  They also are very focused on upcycling e-waste materials into innovative products.  Upcycling is the process of converting waste materials into new products of better quality or for better environmental value.  ERS has made significant headway in this untapped field of upcycling.  They have discovered how to conjunctionally reuse waste materials from other industries as well – such as natural stone waste.  This webinar will discuss their electronic waste handling, processing, and upcycling activities.

This webinar will also archived on the ISTC website for later viewing (see http://www.istc.illinois.edu/about/sustainability_seminars.cfm for more information and additional webinar archives).

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Juror Spotlight – Bill Olson

This post was written by ISTC staff member Kirsten Walker.

We are grateful to Bill Olson, Director of Sustainability and Stewardship for Motorola Mobile Devices for his long-term commitment to the International Sustainable Electronics Competition. Bill has been with us since the beginning, serving as a juror four times since the competition began as a local event on the campus of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign back in 2009. He has been a juror more than any other individual, sitting out only for the 2010 competition (for more information on past competitions, see our online competition archives). Despite his busy schedule, he has provided valuable feedback on numerous competition entries over the years, and has presented at two past SEI symposia on his work at Motorola.

In his role at Motorola, Bill drives go-to-market strategy for green mobile device products and technologies, and has championed the adoption of ECOMOTO principles across several Motorola business units. ECOMOTO focuses on the realization of environmentally sound, seamless Motorola mobile products and seeks to deliver sustained business impact through green materials and innovative ecodesign practices as can be found in the world’s first carbon free phones built with post consumer recycled plastic: W233 RENEW and MOTOCUBO A45 ECO and the world’s first “green” android phones introduced in 2010 – CITRUS and SPICE.

Bill started the ECOMOTO initiative during his previous role in Motorola Corporate Research, where he headed labs dedicated to International and Environmental Research. Bill’s team in Europe conducted testing on hundreds of Motorola products to ensure they met environmental regulatory requirements of the EU (WEEE/RoHS), American and Asian markets. His lab in China worked closely with manufacturing, engineering and the supply chain to achieve improvements in factory productivity, yield and product reliability.

We value Bill’s input because he is directly involved with innovation everyday and understands what it takes to get a great concept to market in today’s world.  With 23 U.S. patents and more than 40 publications, Bill is a guru in his field. Thanks, Bill, for all of your support!

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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!

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Juror Spotlight – Craig Boswell

This post was written by ISTC staff member Kirsten Walker.

The International Sustainable Electronics Competition staff would like to welcome Craig Boswell, Co-Founder and President of HOBI International, Inc. to the 2013 competition jury. HOBI International is an IT and cellular asset management and electronics recycling company. Craig plays a key role in developing HOBI’s processes and procedures for data security, asset tracking and asset disposition services. He is HOBI’s chief industry consultant on demanufacturing, design for disassembly, and reverse logistics programs. He has also published and presented numerous papers on the recycling of electronic products and the keys to designing more recyclable products.

According to their website, “HOBI’s Mobile Device services group focuses on the resale and recycling of cellular assets. Their client list includes 3 of the 4 national wireless operators in the US, 4 major device OEMs, and many recycling partners that trust us to maximize the value of their cellular assets while protecting sensitive corporate or client data. They process for resale and recycling over 4 million cell phones per year. Their parts recovery division de-manufactures millions of cell phones per year in support of a robust repair market.”

Craig’s background includes nine years experience as an electrical engineer for Texas Instruments, Inc. As a member of Texas Instrument’s engineering staff, he managed electronics design projects and was extensively involved in development and deployment of electronics manufacturing techniques. He was also project manager for the deployment of a major shift in the production process from traditional CFC-based cleaning technologies to more environmentally friendly, no-clean solder technologies. As part of this program team, he was an active member of the IEEE Environmental Technologies subcommittee. This committee was central in developing an industry conference that brought together OEMs, academia, and environmental organizations to discuss key issues in electronics disposition technologies.

Craig is thus well qualified to assess entries for this competition, because he has approached electronics from different ends of the life cycle spectrum–both on the design and manufacturing side and the end-of-life management side. In fact, Craig presented a seminar at the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center last fall called Closing the Loop on Electronics Devices–Design for Recycling, in which he spoke about how his experiences in his current role have allowed him to look back at his experiences as part of design projects and realize that some of the design choices he and colleagues made actually made recycling more difficult. Recycling is sometimes simply not a part of the consideration of engineers and/or industrial designers creating a product. Through efforts like the International Sustainable Electronics Competition, SEI is hoping to ensure that students who may one day work for electronics manufacturers go into those situations with sustainability issues like design for recycling already in mind.

Craig and his colleagues at HOBI International have made it their business to understand design issues related to electronics and curb the issue of electronics waste in a way that is profitable. His expertise and feedback will be valuable and we appreciate the time Craig is donating to the 2013 International Sustainable Electronics Competition.

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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.

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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.

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Juror Spotlight – Professor William Bullock

This post was written by ISTC staff member Kirsten Walker.

The International Sustainable Electronics Competition is delighted to welcome UIUC Industrial Design Professor and Product Interaction Research Laboratory (PIRL) Director William Bullock back to the competition in his new role as juror. Professor Bullock  was the founder of the original competition in 2009 on the University of Illinois campus. He has taught undergraduate and graduate courses in product design and development for over a decade and recently developed the first course at UIUC on sustainable product design. He collaborated with engineering colleagues to develop a course on the topic of electronic waste (e-waste) and organized the annual international electronic waste (e-waste) design competition, which is now known as the International Sustainable Electronics Competition. His career spans three decades as an academician, administrator and practitioner, and includes the direction and advancement of industrial design programs at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, The Georgia Institute of Technology, and Auburn University. He is an active Fellow in the Industrial Designers Society of America, and a National Association of Schools of Art and Design accreditation evaluator. Bill has served several terms on the IDSA National Education Council and is current Chair of its SAGE section and Vice Chair of the Design Foundation.

PIRL links education and research design in the classroom where advanced students from engineering, design and marketing collaborate to conduct product development studies for industry. As an affiliate faculty member with the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center (ISTC) his current research focuses on design for the environment and development of sustainable product designs. At ISTC he has helped build the Sustainable Electronics Initiative (SEI), which is dedicated to the development and implementation of a more sustainable system for designing, producing, reusing, remanufacturing, and recycling electronic devices.

We feel that Professor Bullock will add a unique perspective to this year’s competition as someone who has special ties to the competition and appreciates the growth and direction it’s taken since it’s inception.