William Bullock – Sustainable Electronics Initiative

April 21, 2010May 23, 2018

E-Waste Competition Winners Announced

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

Winners have been announced in the International E-Waste Competition. The competition is part of the Sustainable Electronics Initiative (SEI) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

The competition is designed to prompt the industrialized world to dialogue about product designs for environmentally responsible computing and entertainment. The goals of this competition are to learn about ways to re-use electronic waste (E-Waste) for new and productive means, explore new ideas of how to address E-Waste problems, and contribute to the body of knowledge that advances the practice of environmentally responsible product design.

The winners were announced at the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center (ISTC), the coordinating agency for the Sustainable Electronics Initiative. ISTC is part of the Institute of Natural Resource Sustainability at the University of Illinois.

The videos of the winning entrants were shown as a part of the International E-Waste Video Film Festival. The videos of the winning entries will be shown on the websites of the e-waste competition www.ewaste.illinois.edu, www.istc.illinois.edu, www.sustainelectronics.illinois.edu, as well as SEI’s YouTube Channel.

Entries were judged in two categories: Technical/Geek and Artist/Designer. A total of 33 entries were submitted; 26 were in the Artist/Designer category, and 7 in the Technical/Geek category. Prizes were awarded for the top three projects within each category, along with two honorable mentions in the Artist/Designer category. The first, second, and third place winners will receive $5000, $3000, and $1000 monetary prizes, respectively. In addition, honorable mentions will receive $500. The total amount of money to be given out during the International E-Waste Competition is close to $20,000, which has been made possible through generous contributions by several sponsors, including Dell and Wal-mart.

Technical/Geek Category Winners

First Place

Team: Port-e-garden
Project name: Port-e-garden
School: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Video

Second Place

Team: Chaps
Project name: BioGrow
School: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Video

Third Place

Team: CSULB Studio Group #1
Project name: The Pure Drive Home Automation and Computing System
School: California State University, Long Beach CA
Video

Artist/Designer Category Winners

First Place

Team: revOlve
Project name: revOlve
School: Rochester Institute of Technology, New York
Video

Second Place

Team: eLiminators
Project name: E-volve
School: California State University, Long Beach CA
Video

Third Place

Team: eMotion
Project name: eMotion
School: California State University, Long Beach CA
Video

Honorable Mention

Team: CSULB ID 2011
Project name: The Personalized E-Waste Recycling Bin
School: California State University, Long Beach CA

Honorable Mention

Team: CSULB ID Team
Project name: E-Responsibility
School: California State University, Long Beach CA

The competition was started at UIUC in the fall of 2009. In 2010, the competition was expanded to an international base, where students from all over the globe were able to submit their projects and a 2-minute video online. Each project was judged on their project description and video.

The international scope of the competition was evident through students who submitted entries from various states in the US (Illinois, Minnesota, California, New York) and other countries (Cyprus, Canada, Australia, Turkey and South Korea). The jury of the competition included a variety of experts, including

Vicky Matranga, Design Program Coordinator of International Housewares Association;
Clive Roux, CEO of the Industrial Designers Society of America;
Joe Jasinski, Global Senior Industrial Design Manager at Dell, Inc.;
Steve Belletire, Design Area Head at Southern Illinois University;
Sam Al-Basha, Engineer at the IL Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity;
Chris Newman, Materials and Management Branch of US EPA;
Mike Tibbs, Sr. Director of Information Systems Division Compliance at Wal-mart;
Roger L. Franz, Engineering Manager at Motorola;
and Will Larkin, Director of Vendor Management Office and Star Complex at Wal-mart.

January 25, 2010May 23, 2018

Electronics and Sustainability: Design for Energy and the Environment

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

The Sustainable Electronics Initiative (SEI), part of the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center and the Institute of Natural Resource Sustainability at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), is hosting their first electronics and sustainability symposium. The event will be he held on February 23 and 24, 2010 at the I-Hotel and Conference Center.

Continue reading “Electronics and Sustainability: Design for Energy and the Environment”

July 31, 2009May 23, 2018

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

bullock Note: 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.