Sustainable Electronics Initiative Blog

The International E-Waste Design Competition has changed its name, categories, & judging criteria. The competition, now known as the International Sustainable Electronics Competition, is part of the Sustainable Electronics Initiative (SEI) at the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center (ISTC). It originated in 2009, when it emerged from a class on e-waste issues taught by industrial design Professor William Bullock, an affiliated faculty scientist at ISTC. The competition was focused entirely on reuse of electronic scrap during that first year. What began as a local UIUC event became an international competition in 2010, with submissions being made online by college students and recent graduates from around the world. The competition has evolved a bit each year, and grew to incorporate the entire life cycle of electronics, rather than focusing solely on reuse. Organizers noticed that recent entries seemed to incorporate both prevention of e-waste generation (through design modifications to extend the useful product life cycle of electronic devices) and reuse of electronic scrap, regardless of whether or not they were submitted for the “Prevention” or “Reuse” category. So for 2013, categories have been changed to “Product” and “Non-Product,” with the concepts of prevention and reuse integrated throughout the revised judging criteria. The new name and judging criteria are part of the continuing effort to better focus the competition on ideas for a sustainable system for the design, manufacturing, use, and end-of-life management for electronics. The competition has always been open to students in any discipline, but most entries were from engineering or industrial design students. The new categories will make the multidisciplinary nature of the competition more apparent, as “non-product” entries could more obviously be made by students from other fields.

To learn more about the competition and new categories, visit www.ewaste.illinois.edu. Entries include, among other elements, a brief project description paper and YouTube video summarizing the concept. Expert jurors award cash prizes to the top three projects in each category. Registration is free and will open on September 1, 2013. For more information, contact Joy Scrogum at jscrogum@illinois.edu or 217-333-8948.

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.

College students and recent graduates from around the world were encouraged to submit their ideas for products and services. The entries were ideas that prevent e-waste generation through life-cycle considerations (E-Waste Prevention Category) or that incorporate e-waste components into a new and useful item (E-Waste Reuse Category). The competition is designed to prompt dialogue about product designs for environmentally responsible computing and entertainment. To read the full press release, click here.

The winners were announced during a ceremony on December 4, 2012 at the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center (ISTC), the coordinating agency for Sustainable Electronics Initiative. ISTC is part of the Prairie Research Institute at the University of Illinois. The webinar will be archived on the ISTC web site at http://www.istc.illinois.edu/about/sustainability_seminars.cfm in the next few days. In the meantime, if you would like to watch the webinar, visit https://www4.gotomeeting.com/register/594203991 and enter your email address if you had previously registered for the webinar. If you had not registered, you may do so, and then watch the webinar at that link.

Jurors awarded monetary prizes to the top three projects within each category, along with one honorable mention award. The first place winners will receive $3000, second place is $2000, and third place receives $1000. A total of $12,000 was awarded, which has been made possible through generous contributions by Peter Mcdonnell (Friend level) and Dell (Platinum level).

Winners were as follows (see the full press release for brief project descriptions):

Reuse Category

• Platinum ($3000): digitizer. This concept was submitted by a pair of industrial design students from the University of Wisconsin-Stout: J. Makai Catudio and Ryan Barnes.
• Gold ($2000): The Wake-Up Project. The Wake Up Project team consists of three industrial design students from the University of Wisconsin-Stout: Danny Kopren, Sam Wellskopf, and Lennon TeRonde.
• Silver ($1000): Fluorescence Microscopy Using A Recycled Paper Scanner. This concept was submitted by a recent graduate in electrical engineering (Dustin Gallegos), and two current students, one in biomedical engineering (Lillian Hislop) and the other in general studies (ZhanHao Xi), at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Prevention Category

• Platinum ($3000): EverCloud. This team was comprised of five industrial design students from Auburn University: Sean Kennedy, Christi Talbert, Dylan Piper-Kaiser, Sarah Caudle, and Daniel Piquero.
• Gold ($2000): E3: Energy Efficient Electricity. The concept was developed by three industrial design students from California State University at Long Beach: John Lee, Soyoung Bae, and Sam Sauceda.
• Silver ($1000): loopbook—the future of computing. Loopbook was submitted by a recent graduate in product design and technology from the University of Limerick in Ireland, Damian Coughlan.

Honorable Mention

• Sounds Amass.This concept was proposed by a recent graduate in industrial and product design from the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Tai Ka Cheong.

The competition was started at UIUC in the fall of 2009. In 2010, the competition was expanded so students from all over the globe were able to submit their projects and an online video. Each project was judged on the project description and video. The international scope was evident through students who submitted entries from Bangladesh, Canada, Chile, Hong Kong, India, Ireland, Turkey, and the United States. The jury was comprised of a variety of experts, including:

• Jason Linnell, Executive Director, National Center of Electronics Recycling (NCER)
• Bill Olson, Director, Office of Sustainability and Stewardship, Mobile Devices Business, Motorola, Inc.
• Steven Samuels, Former Brand & Design Manager for ReCellular, Inc.
• Kerstin Nelsen Strom, Ecodesign Section Chair, Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA)
• Jennifer Wyatt, Environmental Scientist, Materials Management Branch, U.S. EPA Region 5

Videos from the winning entries will soon be available on www.ewaste.illinois.edu. In the meantime they are available on the SEI YouTube Channel. And you can watch them below. Congratulations to the winners and all of our participants for choosing to be part of the solution to the growing e-waste problem by conceiving of how our electronic products could be produced, used, and disposed of in more sustainable ways. Stay tuned to the competition web site for more information, coming in the new year, about the 2013 competition.

Join us for a webinar on Monday, November 5, 2012, 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM CDT. This seminar will be hosted at the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center (ISTC) in Champaign, IL, and simultaneously broadcast online. The presentation will be archived on the ISTC web site (see http://www.istc.illinois.edu/about/sustainability_seminars.cfm for more information and additional webinar archives).

Dr. Carol Handwerker, Reinhardt Schuhmann Jr. Professor of Materials Engineering, Purdue University, will present “Sustainable Electronics: Lessons Learned from the RoHS and the Pb-free Transition.” Register online  for this webinar at https://www4.gotomeeting.com/register/712035655.

Abstract: With the impending ban on Pb in electronics in 2006, the consumer electronics industry world-wide began working together in the late ’90′s to define a standard Pb-free solder alloy for electronics manufacturing. The speed of the transition and the level of cooperation demonstrated in preparing industry to manufacture products with Pb-free solder provide benchmarks for sustainability-driven technology transitions in a rapidly changing global industry.  What does this tell us about future changes in materials and processes as we learn more about the consequences of our electronics use?

SEI, the Great Lakes Regional Pollution Prevention Roundtable (GLRPPR), and ISTC are hosting a series of seminars this fall focused on sustainable electronics research and issues. Watch the SEI calendar for upcoming seminar dates. You may contact Nancy Holm, SEI Research Coordinator, to be added to the mailing list to receive email notifications of upcoming seminars.

Reminder: Registration for the 2012 International E-Waste Design Competition will close at 4:59 PM Central time, tomorrow, November 1, 2012. If you have registered and are working on a submission, be sure to submit all required information before that time. Once the deadline passes, you will no longer be able to access your online submission form using your log in and password.

Participants are encouraged to enter required information, such as contact information and proof of eligibility for team members, as soon as possible. Please do not wait until the last minute to submit all of your information and end up racing against time to get necessary files uploaded. When updating your entry, it is important to remember scroll all the way down to the bottom of the submission form and click on “Update Project Information.” This saves the new material you added to your entry. Failure to click on the “update” button could result in information not being saved. You don’t want to be disqualified for not having a complete entry because you forgot to click on the “update” button, so please make sure to click that before you sign out at any point.

Jurors will begin to assess entries after the deadline passes, and will make final decisions by the end of November. Winners will be announced on December 4, 2012, at the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center and via webinar. Details on registration for that webinar will be posted as the date approaches. Cash prizes, made possible by sponsors including Dell, Inc., will be awarded in each of two categories (E-Waste Prevention and E-Waste Reuse).

Good luck with your entries!

Join us for a webinar on Wednesday, October 3, 2012, 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM CDT. This seminar will be hosted at the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center (ISTC) in Champaign, IL, and simultaneously broadcast online. The presentation will be archived on the ISTC web site (see http://www.istc.illinois.edu/about/sustainability_seminars.cfm for more information and additional webinar archives).

Craig Boswell, Co-founder and President of HOBI International, Inc., will present “Closing the Loop on Electronic Devices.” Register online  for this webinar at https://www4.gotomeeting.com/register/667661975.

The incorporation of Design for Recyclability (DFR) in to the design process is an extremely critical step towards the creation of more recyclable electronics products. A product’s design can have the single greatest impact on both the logistics and the costs of the recycling process. Constraints set forth by the design can dictate not only the methodology used to recycle the product but also the revenues (or costs) generated from the recycling process. This presentation provides an overview of the application of DFR concepts to the design of electronics products.

SEI, the Great Lakes Regional Pollution Prevention Roundtable (GLRPPR), and ISTC are hosting a series of seminars this fall focused on sustainable electronics research and issues. Watch the SEI calendar for upcoming seminar dates. You may contact Nancy Holm, SEI Research Coordinator, to be added to the mailing list to receive email notifications of upcoming seminars.

Join us for a webinar on Wednesday, September 19, 2012, 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM CDT. This seminar will be hosted at the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center (ISTC) in Champaign, IL, and simultaneously broadcast online. The presentation will be archived on the ISTC web site (see http://www.istc.illinois.edu/about/sustainability_seminars.cfm for more information and additional webinar archives).

Dr. Callie Babbitt of the Rochester Institute of Technology will present “Adapting Ecological Models for Linking Sustainable Production and Consumption Dynamics in Consumer Electronic Product Systems” via webinar. Read the rest of this entry »

Join us for a webinar on Wednesday, September 5, 2012, 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM CDT. This seminar will be hosted live at the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center (ISTC) in Champaign, IL, and simultaneously broadcast online. The presentation will be archived on the ISTC web site (see http://www.istc.illinois.edu/about/sustainability_seminars.cfm for more information and additional webinar archives).

Presenters include William Bullock, Affiliate with the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center and Professor of Industrial Design in the School of Art and Design, U of I at Urbana-Champaign; and Joy Scrogum, Emerging Technologies Resource Specialist at the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center, Prairie Research Institute, U of I at Urbana- Champaign.  Read the rest of this entry »

Registration is now open for the 2012 International E-Waste Design Competition. Participants in this competition are asked to explore solutions to both remediate the existing e-waste problem and prevent e-waste generation in the future. Registration is free and open to current college/university students from around the world and recent graduates. See the competition web site for complete details, and my previous post announcing the competition.

Submissions are being accepted in two categories: E-Waste Prevention (products or services that prevent e-waste generation through life-cycle considerations) and E-waste Reuse (ideas that incorporate e-waste components into a new and useful item). Note changes to the rules for this year, if you participated in previous years. The project description is now a minimum of 500 words, with a maximum of five pages, and a bibliography with a minimum of five references is required. An important component of the submission is a brief YouTube video highlighting the entry’s design, features, and special design concepts. See “Rules” on the competition web site for complete details and requirements.

SEI is grateful to Dell, Inc. for their corporate sponsorship of this year’s competition. The Jury will award one entry from each of the two categories a Platinum Award of 3,000 USD, a Gold Award of 2,000 USD, and a Silver Award of 1,000 USD, for a total of six monetary awards. The decisions of the jury are final. Honorable Mention awards may be given at the discretion of the judges, and will receive certificates and recognition on the competition web site and in press releases. No cash prizes will be given for Honorable Mentions.

The 2012 Jury is comprised of the following individuals:

• Jason Linnell, Executive Director, National Center for Electronics Recycling (NCER)
• Chris Newman, Materials Management Branch, U.S. EPA Region 5
• Bill Olson, Director, Office of Sustainability and Stewardship, Mobile Devices Business, Motorola, Inc.
• Steven Samuels, Brand & Design Manager of ReCellular, Inc.
• Kerstin Nelson Strom, Ecodesign Section Chair, Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA)

If you are interested in supporting the competition, individuals may use the secure online link to the U of I Foundation available on the competition web site. Corporations may contact Joy Scrogum at 217-333-8948. Donations are used for cash prizes and program administration.

For more information, contact Joy Scrogum, SEI Education Coordinator, via email or at 217-333-8948.

There have been several updates to the Sustainable Electronics Initiative (SEI) website:

• WEEE 2: The European Commission has updated the WEEE Directive. See the European section of the International Law & Policy page for a link to more information on the revised directive.
• Recycling in Manitoba: Manitoba’s government run recycling program switched to a privately run program earlier this month. We’ve added a section on Manitoba in the Canada section of the International Law & Policy page and a link to an article about the program.
• International E-Waste Design Competition: We have added links to the Resources section of the competition web site, including “Books” and “Background & Promotional Materials.”  We have also updated the Jury page, where you can find bios and pictures of this year’s jurors.

This Fall, current college/university students and recent graduates will have an exciting opportunity to create useful and appealing products from e-waste—computers, printers, cell phones and similar materials that would normally end up in landfills. This is not only an interesting challenge, but an important social and environmental issue, as the U.S. EPA estimates that Americans currently own nearly 3 billion electronic products and that 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 majority is disposed in landfills.

The Sustainable Electronics Initiative (SEI, www.sustainelectronics.illinois.edu) and the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center (ISTC, www.istc.illinois.edu) are once again pleased to announce the International E-Waste Design Competition (www.ewaste.illinois.edu), in which participants will explore solutions to this problem at the local level and beyond. At the conclusion of last year’s competition, $20,000 in prize money was awarded to six teams and three honorable mentions. Prize money was contributed by corporate sponsors including DELL and Walmart. The prizes for the 2012 competition are to be announced. For videos from last year’s competition, see www.ewaste.illinois.edu/.

Registration is free and opens September 1, 2012. College students and recent graduates are encouraged to submit their ideas for products or services that prevent e-waste generation through life-cycle considerations (E-Waste Prevention Category) or that incorporate e-waste components into a new and useful item (E-Waste Reuse Category). See the rules posted on the competition web site for complete details regarding eligibility and descriptions of project categories. One entry per person or team is allowed. Students are not allowed to be on more than one team, but students are allowed to submit a project with one team and additionally submit one individual project. Registration closes November 1, 2012 and winners will be announced in early December as the finale of ISTC’s Sustainability Seminar series for Fall 2012, which will be focused on sustainable electronics. The awards presentation will also be broadcast as a webinar. Read the rest of this entry »