Sustainable Electronics Initiative Blog

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.

Last week we announced some highlights from our symposium held in February. Electronics & Sustainability: Design for Energy and the Environment elicited a frenzy of information and thought provoking ideas. An extensive amount of topics were covered through a variety of perspectives.

In hopes of continuing the discussion I plan on posting a multi-part series addressing different topics raised at the symposium.

The first of this series will continue the topic from a recent post: export.

Read the rest of this entry »

The 2010 Electronics and Sustainability: Design for Energy and the Environment Symposium held two weeks ago was a great success! Over 20 impressive speakers in the fields of academia, manufacturing, retail, government, and recycling presented their take on electronics and sustainability. We had an impressive turnout, lively conversation, and overall, a great time had by all.

Here are some highlights from the event: Read the rest of this entry »

In one of my classes at the University of Illinois, each student was assigned to study a modern product in depth and then give a presentation on it a couple weeks later. The overall theme for the presentations was, “Newer is Better!” Whether it was a presentation about LED lights, Blue Ray lasers, Teflon, or electronics, the message was clear, this new technology far exceeds the old so it’s out with the old, in with the new.

I agree that most of these products exceed their earlier generation versions. They usually offer more features, perform better, and they even often use less energy. I am all for better designs, in fact, that is what my 4 years of undergrad in Industrial Design was all about.

I am, however, fearful that these designs encourage wastefulness. Read the rest of this entry »

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.

Read the rest of this entry »

Electronic waste, or “E-Waste,” generated by computers, TVs, cameras, printers, and cell phones, is a growing global issue. According to the U.S. EPA, Americans currently own nearly 3 billion electronic products and as new products are purchased, obsolete products are stored or discarded at alarming rates. About two-thirds of the electronic devices removed from service are still in working order. However, only about 15% of this material is recycled while the vast majority is disposed in landfills. The Sustainable Electronics Initiative (SEI), hosted by the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center (ISTC), is pleased to announce the International E-Waste Design Competition, in which participants will explore solutions to this problem at the local level and beyond, by using e-waste components to create appealing and useful products. Read the rest of this entry »

Electronic recycling has been a recognized problem for a while now but not a whole lot has been resolved.

Europe, among other places, has been actively trying to solve this issue since early 1990s.  So, what can we learn from them? What are the absolute best solutions for our environment when it comes to electronic waste and what is feasible? Read the rest of this entry »

Have you ever had a career hero? Someone in your line of work that you really admire? Perhaps a cliché example would be to aspire to have the business sense of Bill Gates.

I have three industrial design heroes. The first is Henry Dreyfuss, an American designer who made significant advancements in the usability and function of products during the middle of the century. The second is William McDonough, a designer and architect known for his ultra sustainable ideas. And the third is Naoto Fukasawa, a well-known Japanese designer famous for his simplistic and sleek products. I became interested in the latter after seeing just one of his designs in an industrial design class I had my sophomore year of college. It was, surprisingly enough, a CD player. Nothing really relevant to anything I was interested in much less relevant to that year (the age of ipods.)  Nonetheless, I was blow away. Read the rest of this entry »

On November 11th, 2009, at the I-Hotel and Conference Center in Champaign, IL, Willie Cade gave a lecture titled, “The Truth, Tragedy, and Transformation of E-Waste”.

Read the rest of this entry »

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. Read the rest of this entry »