Sustainable Electronics Initiative Blog

According to the U.S. EPA web site, “The Design for the Environment (DfE) Program works in partnership with a broad range of stakeholders to reduce risk to people and the environment by preventing pollution. DfE focuses on industries that combine the potential for chemical risk reduction and improvements in energy efficiency with a strong motivation to make lasting, positive changes. DfE convenes partners, including industry representatives and environmental groups, to develop goals and guide the work of the partnership. Partnership projects evaluate the human health and environmental considerations, performance, and cost of traditional and alternative technologies, materials, and processes. As incentives for participation and driving change, DfE offers unique technical tools, methodologies, and expertise.”

The DfE Program has produced several partnership projects related to electronics. Past projects include the Printed Wiring Board Partnership and the Computer Display Partnership. Current partnerships include the Lead-Free Solder Partnership, the Wire & Cable Partnership and the Flame Retardants in Printed Circuit Boards Partnership. Each project site includes general project information, project milestones, links to any publications produced and a list of the partners involved. Read the rest of this entry »

Amy Cade, June 2009

Most of you have probably had to deal with an old TV or computer before. When your hard drive crashed or when you needed to update from that ugly tan box taking up your entire desk you probably ran into the trouble of figuring out what to do with the old TV or computer.  I might have a different experience with electronic waste or “e-waste” then most.

I grew up with a “fix it” dad. You had a problem; dad would know what to do. For instance, my grandparents hated the pebbles that fell to the bottom of their pool. No problem; “Kids,” he’d say “its $.10 per pebble, $.20 for the really big ones.” I made a killing those summers.  When my dad learned of people’s problem of not knowing what to do with their old electronics he seemed to have no trouble finding the solution. Students of Chicago Public Schools needed computers and people had working or nearly working computers that they did not want anymore. I was 7 years old when my dad, Willie Cade, turned this into a business. He took unwanted computers, fixed them up and provided them to houses of at risk children. At the time, this just meant prospective giant fortresses of e-waste in my basement.

In high school I grew an inclination towards art but I still had aspects of my father’s love of science and technology. So in college, I decided to major in Industrial Design and Painting. Industrial designers–people that are in charge of making sleeker shoes and fancier blenders–can be considered a big proponent of the production of useless stuff which just contributes more waste to the world. But more recently, industrial designers can also be seen as friends of the environment; they can design things that use better materials, produce less waste during the manufacturing or use stages, or can be disassembled easily and without harm to the environment or sometimes even benefitting the environment. gDiapers, for instance, are flushable and compostable diapers so instead of sending diapers to landfills, you can turn the waste into biosolids. This is the type of design I am interested in.

During my junior year of college I introduced my Industrial Design professor, William Bullock, to my dad so that they could collaborate on solutions to e-waste. They came up with an idea to make a competition for students to design things using old computer parts. First, they wanted a class to figure out background information on the topic. So fall of my senior year I, along with 3 other students, researched e-waste internationally, nationally, and locally to see how big of a problem it was. We found that e-waste is a huge problem at all levels. We surveyed a couple buildings on campus and found rooms full of old computers that no one quite knew what to do with.

In the spring of my senior year I was in the second part of the e-waste class, this time with about 20 other students. In this class we surveyed other recyclers, heard presentations from various e-waste or design experts, and towards the very end of the semester held an e-waste competition. The competition was better than I could have ever imagined. It was held on the University of Illinois main quad on a beautiful day, there were a lot of interested students walking by, there were plenty of great ideas and astonishing presentations from the 21 design teams, and there were 6 prizes that consisted of thousands of dollars in scholarships. There were designs for kiosks, super computers, digital projectors that could be adapted to any low tech classroom, and even things like housing for plants and recycling stations. The competition gave me great hope for the future of e-waste. (For more information on the competition, along with links to press coverage and photos, see the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center web site.)

Now I am working at the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center which is part of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. My job is to search for information about what the problems are related to e-waste and what is already being done about it. Some days I am more optimistic than others but overall I feel like this problem will get better.

In the coming weeks I’ll write more about my experiences in Professor Bullock’s class, providing tips for how to host an e-waste collection event. I’ll also be interviewing my dad, Willie Cade, to present more about e-waste issues from the perspective of a recycler/refurbisher and William Bullock to hear about his take on e-waste from the industrial design perspective.

E-Waste is more relevant an issue than ever in this country. The switch from analog to digital cable two weeks ago and Governor Rick Perry’s (Texas) veto of the extended producer responsibility bill (HB 821) one week ago made for a lot of recent discussion about what to do with those old television sets. Massachusetts, Georgia, Missouri, and Oklahoma, among others, reported on solutions to the problem of left-over TVs. Willie Cade of PC Rebuilders and Recyclers says in a report by NBC Chicago that Illinoisans should hold on to their old television sets until next year Jan. 1st, when the extended producer responsibility act for Illinois is enacted. Many are shocked and saddened that Texas won’t have that option due to Governor Perry’s veto. You can view the reasons for the veto according to the governor’s office at: http://governor.state.tx.us/news/veto/12608. The reason for the shock is that the extended produced responsibility is already very popular among many other states.  It can encourage manufacturers to design with the product’s end of life in mind so that they, the manufacturers, have financial incentive not to have to deal with as much waste down the road.  For more information and opinions on HB 821 turn to the Houston Chronical’s arcticle, “Tube TVs by the Ton”, and the reader comments.

For more info on this issue and other E-Waste topics head to my Diigo Page.

You may have noticed that many of the posts here on the SEI Blog are listed as being “Posted from Diigo.” These posts include lists of associated tags and snapshots of the Diigo bookmarks for the person who wrote the post in question.

So you may be wondering, what is Diigo? I thought I would take a minute to explain and to point out some of its more useful features. (Please note that this post is intended for information purposes only and is not meant to be construed as an endorsement of Diigo by SEI, ISTC or any affiliated organization.)

Diigo is a social bookmarking system. You may already be familiar with other social bookmarking systems such as delicious. Social bookmarking involves saving your bookmarks online (making those bookmarks accessible wherever you have an Internet connection) and sharing those bookmarks with friends, coworkers, collaborators, etc. These bookmarks can be tagged with relevant keywords, making them easier to search. Tags also allow you to find other people with similar interests using the same social bookmarking system, and to follow or subscribe to their bookmarks on subjects that interest you.

Some of the more useful features of Diigo include:

• The ability to highlight parts or all of a given web site. Instead of just bookmarking, you might highlight a particular section of a web site that is of interest to you.
• The ability to add “sticky notes.” You can attach “sticky notes” to whatever you highlight or bookmark. Your annotations can be kept private or shared with others.
• These annotations (highlights and sticky notes) are persistent–meaning that if you’re browsing the Internet while logged into Diigo and you revisit a site you’ve previously annotated, you’ll be able to to see your highlighting and notes superimposed on the original web page.  It’s a bit like reading a virtual textbook in which you’ve highlighted text and written in the margins.
• Networking and collaboration. You can create or join groups within Diigo to share bookmarks and annotations on topics of common interest.  Groups can have forum discussions. Also, if you’re signed into Diigo while browsing the Internet, you can view sticky notes that other people have attached to the web site you’re viewing. This can be a way to learn about and connect to other people with similar interests. You can send annotated web sites to people through the use of specialized URLs generated by Diigo. Within your Diigo dashboard you can  get recommendations for web sites that may be of interest to you or search for people with similar bookmarks or tags.
• Tools for sharing information in other formats. In addition to sharing bookmarks in the traditional way, tools are available within Diigo to post bookmarks to a blog (as has been done here on the SEI blog), to share bookmarks via Twitter or Facebook, or add a widget (complete with an RSS feed) displaying your most recent bookmarks  or your tags to a web site.

For more information on Diigo, view the demo video on You Tube, read the related Wikipedia article, or read the “About” section of the Diigo web site.

If you have questions about using Diigo or other social bookmarking systems, feel free to email Joy Scrogum. If there are other features of Diigo that you find useful which are not listed here, or if you use a different system to achieve similar results, please feel free to share that information in the “Comments” section of this post.

• Ghana: Digital Dumping Ground

  The video aired 6-23-09 on PBS Frontline/World.

• On the outskirts of Ghana’s biggest city sits a smoldering wasteland, a slum carved into the banks of the Korle Lagoon, one of the most polluted bodies of water on earth. The locals call it Sodom and Gomorrah.

• tags: Ghana, E-Waste, electronics, electronic, waste, computers, digital, dumping, ground, PBS, Frontline

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

• WATCH: Governor vetoes TV recycling measure | News for Austin, Texas | KVUE.com | Local News

  KVUE News, Austin, TX, 6/23/09. Includes video with reporter Elise Hu. “Austin Democrat Kirk Watson says he’s stunned by a veto from Governor Rick Perry of a bill that would have encouraged people to recycle their old TVs instead of throwing them out. Watson’s measure would have called for manufacturers to take back their old sets. He says the manufacturers were OK with that, and that’s why he’s surprised Perry tossed it out. “

• tags: e-waste, ewaste, electronics, icare, p2, p2tagteam, legislation, consumer information, electronic waste, hazardous waste, product stewardship, recycling, regulatory integration, takeback, technology, televisions, waste, Texas

Comments associated with this news article are interesting; people are perplexed as to why legislation would be necessary to encourage recycling. This indicates an ignorance of the cost associated with electronics recycling.
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

• LG, San Francisco BART Begin Mobile Phone Recycling

  Waste & Recycling News, 6/10/09 edition. “LGE MobileComm USA, a unit of LG Electronics Inc., is teaming up with San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit to provide mobile phone recycling. LG began outfitting six BART stations in San Francisco with cell phone collection receptacles to encourage commuters to recycle their phones, chargers and accessories. The sites will accept any manufacturer’s devices through July 6. Only 10% of the mobile phones sold in the United States are recycled, according to the company.”

  tags: cell phones, mobile phones, consumer information, recycling, icare, p2, p2tagteam, electronics, hazardous waste, pollution prevention, product stewardship, takeback, technology, waste, e-waste, electronic waste, environment, ewaste

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

• Sustainable Management of Electronic Waste (e-Waste)

  Design for environment cleaner production, extended producer responsibility, standards and labeling, product stewardship, recycling and remanufacturing are some of the practices adopted by various countries around the world to deal with the e-waste stream. An overview of these practices is presented and the manner in which they contribute to the sustainable management of e-waste is discussed.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

The text of this bill (SB-107) is available online.

• Wisconsin Senate Approves E-Waste Recycling Bill

  Associated Press via Forbes, 6/9/09. The Wisconsin Senate has approved (23-10) a bill that would require electronics manufacturers to arrange for recycling of their products.Under Wisconsin’s bill, dumping e-waste in landfills would be banned. Manufacturers would have to arrange to recycle 80 percent of the total weight of products they sold in the state in a given year. They also would have to pay up to $5,000 annually to register with state environmental officials.

  tags: e-waste, trade, p2, p2tagteam, pollution prevention, electronics, electronic waste, ewaste, regulatory integration, takeback, waste, product stewardship, legislation, policy, icare, hazardous waste, recycling

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

The following bookmarks have been added to Diigo:

• Computers and the environment : understanding and managing their impacts [WorldCat.org]
  Book and book chapters added to Refworks database.
  tags: icare

• Tele-Inverse Manufacturing — An International E-Waste Recycling Proposal
  tags: icare, e-waste, recycling, inverse manufacturing

• Results for ‘su:Electronic apparatus and appliances Recycling.’ [WorldCat.org]
  Search results in WorldCat.org for Electronic apparatus and appliances — Recycling.
  tags: icare

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.