Electronics and Sustainability: Design for Energy and the Environment
Aida Sefic Williams | January 25, 2010
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.
The goal of this symposium is to create a forum for experts in academia, industry, policy, and others to join together and discuss the current ewaste problem and potential solutions. As the dependency and desire for newer electronics increases, the ewaste problem becomes increasingly apparent and severe. Therefore, the symposium will cover topics such as materials and design, life cycle analysis, design for electronics recovery, policy, electronics manufacturing and recovery. The symposium’s keynote speakers include Mike Tibbs, Senior Director of Compliance at Walmart and Rajib Adhikary, Design Strategist for Dell Experience Design Group. In addition to presentation, the highlight of the symposium will be a panel discussion, held at the end of Feb. 23.
The panel discussion will offer an opportunity for audience members to ask questions of individual representatives, in order to open up the dialogue between various aspects of the ewaste problem. The panel will include Rajib Adhikary (Design Strategist for Dell Experience Design Group), William Olson (Director of International and Environmental Research and Development at Motorola), Willie Cade (Founder and CEO of PC Rebuilders and Recyclers), Chris Newman (Environmental Scientist with US EPA Region 5), Deborah Thurston (Industrial and Systems Engineering Professor at UIUC), John Abelson (Material Science and Engineering Professor at UIUC).
The symposium will serve as a way to open communication and collaboration between designers, manufacturers, recyclers and refurbishers, academic and policy professionals in an effort to work together to solve this expanding problem. A full schedule of speakers can be found here.
For more information about the symposium, please contact Aida Sefic Williams or Wayne Duke.
