Tag: Electronic Waste

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Electronics Recycling Responsibility

Note: This post was written by SEI staff, Aida Sefic Williams.

When talking about electronics recycling, most people would agree that it is a good idea. As a matter of fact, I am also confident that if you told people there is a place close to them which offers responsible electronics recycling, they would be more than happy to recycle old computers, cell phones, etc. But what happens when you ask someone to pay to have something recycled? Then the idea of recycling does not look nearly as appealing as before. This raises a very good question – who is responsible for electronics recycling?

This is a much-debated issue in the electronics world. Let’s face it–if a consumer paid a substantial amount of money for a computer, he or she will not be thrilled with the idea of paying more money to dispose of the computer. For many individuals in such a case, the option of storing an old computer sounds better than recycling it for a fee. Manufacturers are also not jumping for joy to recycle and dispose of electronic components with their money. So, once again, whose responsibility is it? Continue reading “Electronics Recycling Responsibility”

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A satirical and very true view of the e-waste problem

Note: This post was written by SEI staff, Aida Sefic Williams.

The Onion is a very popular, purely fictional and extremely satirical website. The Onion usually consists of stories whose point is only to amuse, with stories such as “Most College Males Admit to Regularly Getting Stoked”. As topics become more interesting to media outlets, The Onion is usually there to make fun of those same topics with their dead-pan sarcasm. While amusing, most of their articles have never struck a particular chord with me until their article titled “New Device Desirable, Old Device Undesirable”. Continue reading “A satirical and very true view of the e-waste problem”

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E-waste International

ewaste-computer-recycling-image[1]Note: This post was written by SEI staff member, Amy Cade.

As Aida mentioned in an earlier post, a lack of a global standard for e-waste is one of the biggest problems we, in the e-waste industry, have to deal with.  Inconsistencies between states, countries, and continents not only make it hard on the manufacturers but also on the well-intentioned collectors.

Sunil Herat, a senior lecturer in waste management at Griffith University in Australia, addressed this problem in a recent paper titled International regulations and treaties on electronic waste (e-waste).  Herat has given an overview of the different policies in different regions.  This post will be a summary and commentary of that document. Continue reading “E-waste International”

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Books vs. eBooks – A life cycle comparison

Note: This post was written by SEI staff, Aida Sefic Williams.

Since writing the first part of the eBook mini-series, I have been interested in the life cycle assessment comparison of books and eBooks. This concept may sound simple at first, but it quickly becomes much more complicated. While a true analysis (one worthy of publishing in a scientific journal) would require months of work, data collection and analysis, calculations, and report-writing, I opted for a much simpler approach (one that may be publishable on an informal blog, such as this one). Continue reading “Books vs. eBooks – A life cycle comparison”

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Sustainability in the eyes of a recent graduate

Note: This post was written by SEI staff, Aida Sefic Williams.

SEI welcomes new staff member Aida Williams. In this post, Aida talks about her training as an engineer, how the concept of sustainability was dealt with in her experience as a student, and ideas for how engineering programs could foster the type of thinking needed to approach sustainability issues.

Sustainability is a term used often in today’s technical professions, and it is most certainly a buzz word heard around college campuses. I am a recent graduate from the Georgia Institute of Technology, shortly referred to as Georgia Tech. There, I majored in mechanical engineering, where I received a good education at a top-notch school. But how much did this education prepare me for my current line of work dealing with sustainability and e-waste?
Continue reading “Sustainability in the eyes of a recent graduate”

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Teaching a Better Way to Design: An Interview with William Bullock

bullockNote: This post was written by SEI staff member, Amy Cade.

William Bullock is the Director of the Design for Energy and Environment Laboratory (DEE Lab,) an Affiliated Faculty Member for the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center (ISTC,) and he has been my professor of industrial design at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign for the past two years. I sat down with him recently to get an experienced designer’s perspective on e-waste.  After all, designers are a vital part of the creation of e-waste; they can have a lot to do with the perpetuation or prevention of waste just by the decisions they make early on in the manufacturing stage.

Recently, I have noticed that most designers came to an unspoken consensus about design, it can not be about simply making more things; resources are limited, waste is ever increasing and our environment is suffering.  Sustainability is no longer just a good idea, it is a necessity.  This change came in the middle of William’s career and instead of reluctantly complying like some of his colleagues did, he embraced the idea of socially conscious design wholeheartedly.

William acknowledges that industrial design can be part of the problem.  Industrial designers create attractive newer looking products in an effort to stimulate sales.  This can encourage consumers to unnecessarily throw away products in favor of buying newer looking, often more “aesthetically pleasing” ones.  William also believes that we have the capability, as designers, to change that. William said, “We need to not only to deal with waste but also figure out how to reuse, recycle, design things so that they can be easily upgraded instead of thrown away all together.” He wondered if it is possible to find a universal aesthetic so that objects do not get dated as easily.

The positive side to designing superfluous products is that it sustains our economy. I asked William if he thinks it has to be one or the other; environmental concerns over economical ones.   He admitted that  is a challenge. “We are gluttonous” William explained, “so we might not only have the problem of having people buy new, but how do we make it so that when the old things are thrown out they do not harm the environment?”

William McDonough, a designer that recently spoke at the University of Illinois, has a lot of ideas that address this problem. For instance, he proposed a pen that you can stomp into the ground when you are finished with it and it would have the right nutrients and seed impeded in the pen to make it grow into a flower.  Ideas like these that do not discourage consumption but are also great for the environment is a trend that needs to be further exploited.

Another solution that William Bullock is focused on is providing information to the public because he believes that people are more apt to the right thing once they have the right information.  That is why he is working hard to set up initiatives that teach all there is to know about sustainability in product design.

For more information on William’s educational efforts, see the description of the sustainability and e-waste issues course he taught on the SEI Current Projects page.  The course had a Sustainable E-Waste Design Competition associated with it.  I spoke about both in an earlier post.