Tag Archives: e-waste

Reducing E-Waste: Where We Stand Today

Photo of trash can full of e-waste.I have seen the future and I am not sure I like it. Recently I wrote about modular electronics and was hopeful we could reduce electronic waste, or e-waste, by retaining smartphones, tablets, and laptops longer and replacing only small broken or outdated components, such as memory or a screen. Although I am still hopeful for the future, I think that we have a long way to go to clean up the waste we have already generated. I was out and about yesterday and came upon a shop propping its door open with a Sony VAIO laptop. If laptops can be used as doorstops, then perhaps we have too many of them on this planet.

 Current State

According to Earthfix, 1.4 billion new phones are produced each year. Unless they are for new consumers, that means 1.4 billion are also discarded. In a recent article on PBS NewsHour, Jim Puckett, activist and head of the Seattle based Basel Action Network, led an investigation into the electronic recycling industry. Partnering with MIT’s Senseable City Lab, his organization planted tracking devices in 200 pieces of non-functioning electronic waste. They deposited the devices at recognized recycling centers and then followed the trackers to see where they ended up. To their surprise, more than a third of the devices ended up in Asia, most in Hong Kong. Instead of being dismantled and recycled in America, they are being shipped whole to Asia where there are far fewer safety and health regulations. They can be dismantled more cheaply because the methods are crude and dangerous.

While we can pride ourselves on the fact that our electronic waste did not end up in our landfills, we are transferring at least some of the recycling problem to less developed countries. Part of the reason for this is falling steel, gold, plastic, and copper prices. It is more difficult to recoup operating costs for a recycler so they sometimes shift the burden and sell the waste to others who can do it cheaper. What if we didn’t generate all of this electronic waste in the first place?

Future State

I am excited about the possibility of modular electronics and hope they lead to a smaller amount of electronic waste. Europe leads the world in regulations requiring manufacturers to take back and recycle their old products. Despite that diligence, a Newsweek article last year claimed that only one-third of Europe’s e-waste goes where it should and a lot of it ends up in Africa. The United States ships our problem to Asia and Europe ships theirs to Africa. We are both shifting the burden to those less equipped to deal with the problem.

In the U.S., several states have passed laws similar to those in Europe that require manufacturers to create or support outlets that take back end-of-life electronics. While this is a good first step, I think we need to go further. We need to try and find assembly methods that make products easy to disassemble and recycle at the end of the product’s life. While working for Hewlett-Packard a number of years ago, I came up with the idea to manufacture printer shells out of macaroni so that when the printer reaches its end of life, you just pop off the shell, throw it into a pot of water and you have dinner. My idea was not embraced but I still think it is a good one.

Thoughts

Electronic waste and our current recycling methods are a big problem and they are only getting bigger. I would love to hear your thoughts on ways to tackle this. Perhaps together we can come up with a solution.

Author Kelly BrownAbout Kelly Brown

Kelly Brown is an IT professional and assistant professor of practice for the UO Applied Information Management Master’s Degree Program. He writes about IT and business topics that keep him up at night.

E-Waste and the Future of Modular Electronics

Modular cell phone In a recent article from National Public Radio, the authors pose the question “If I told you there was a way to keep using your phone forever, would you want to?” Interestingly, the response was split: some would gladly keep their phone and others really do want to upgrade every year or two. The authors of the article focus on electronic modularity or in this case, cell phone modularity. This is the idea that a phone or other electronic device can be upgraded not by discarding the entire phone, but only the portion that is lacking. The upgrade may mean more memory, a better or additional battery, a higher resolution camera, or a new screen. Technically it is possible to build a modular smartphone now, but of course that would mean that the device manufacturer would have to accept a lower revenue stream. I think that the good folks at Samsung and Apple would be hard pressed to buy into that idea. Let’s explore current efforts with modularization and pose the same question: “If you could keep your phone forever, would you do it?”

Phonebloks

Dave Haakens has started a web site called Phonebloks to promote the concept of modular phones. He is not building the actual phone itself but is hoping to inspire someone else to pick up the torch and run with it. He believes, and rightly so, that we are filling our landfills with e-waste such as discarded electronic devices that have become obsolete. Technically and physically they are still sound, but were tossed aside because someone wanted the newest model or an operating system upgrade left the old phone underpowered. A modular phone would eliminate both of these examples of e-waste. The only thing discarded, or hopefully recycled, would be the small module being replaced.

LG G5

LG has created a new phone with replaceable modules called LG Friends. Current modules include an enhanced camera and replacement batteries. LG promises to release more friends in the future. While this design does not provide for every module to be replaced, it is definitely a step in the right direction.

Puzzlephone, Fairphone, and Project ARA

A recent Tech Times article highlighted the difference between some of the platforms that are available or will hopefully be available soon. The Puzzlephone will be available in September and is split into three components, the display, the processor, and the battery, along with other electronics. You can replace only one of these components when they die or are underpowered. The Fairphone is available now and every component can be swapped out including the processor, the camera, the speaker, and the display. Project ARA from Google is currently only a concept but they hope to work with developers to create replaceable modules other than the traditional brains and the heart. Google has promised to release a prototype later this year.

The Plumbing Store

I look forward to the day when I can walk into the phone store and pick up a module, regardless of the phone provider, and it will work seamlessly with my phone. When I have a plumbing leak, I don’t replace all of the plumbing in my house but simply go to the hardware store and buy a replacement pipe the length, diameter, and material that I need. It doesn’t need to match the brand of plumbing that is in my home because the plumbing industry long ago agreed on standards. I look forward to that same ubiquity and modularity in the electronics industry.

Thoughts

What do you think of modular phones? Would you keep your current phone forever if you could replace just the individual components as they failed or became obsolete? Would the green factor of not having to replace your phone be a deciding factor? Personally, I like the capabilities and form factor of my current phone and I would hang on to it. Let me know your vote. In a future blog post I will focus on modular laptops and tablets.

Author Kelly BrownAbout Kelly Brown

Kelly Brown is an IT professional and assistant professor of practice for the UO Applied Information Management Master’s Degree Program. He writes about IT and business topics that keep him up at night.

From Green to Blue… and Beyond?

Today’s post is written by Jake Pollack, program manager for the UO Sustainability Leadership Certificate Program.

Over the past few years I have carefully followed not only the colors that are affiliated with sustainability, and their implications, but how sustainability is paired (or not) with technology. So, while it may seem elementary (or primary in the case of blue, and secondary in the case of green—apologies for the educator jokes) the colors point to deeper implications of culture and the blending of different approaches to sustainability and technology. Back in 2009, when I read Andrew Kirk’s Counterculture Green, I started thinking about the historical aspects of the traditional rift between the environmental movement and the world of technology. Having grown up as a nature lover and digital native, I understood the tension between appreciating ecological systems and playing video games, but this, of course, is a much deeper discussion that can’t be covered in one blog entry.

However, what I can chart are some of the recent trends that are promising and point out a few challenges that I see in the future as we move ever deeper into virtual realms where machine-to-machine conversation is the norm, and our dependency on technology is assumed as “natural.” The first of these is the realization that cloud computing has an enormous environmental impact, whether you measure it in terms of water, e-waste, energy consumption, or any other concrete service that is required for large server centers. A recent webinar on Sustainable Industries describes this infrastructure and examples of the continuous improvement and innovation required to make these ventures efficient. A GreenBiz article describes a Stanford study which found that one-tenth of all electricity consumed in the US goes towards the Internet, and reports on the Future of Internet Power group, which is a response by Adobe, eBay, Facebook, HP, salesforce.com, and Symantec to “identify and publicize best practices around low-carbon power-sourcing for data centers in the United States.” Finally, Apple recently announced it will build a giant solar farm to power its Nevada datacenter.

This aspect of greening the cloud is important as big data seems to be on course to grow continuously, and it shows that the major players in both hardware and cloud-based software recognize this as an opportunity in the midst of an unpredictable and volatile energy market. The main challenge actually goes back to the deeper implications of culture and thinking about what all this computing power is actually used for and who is using it. In other words, the question remains whether to put this incredible computing power to use for further preservation and maintenance of the living systems of our planet, or to continue disseminating kitten videos across the Internet. At this time, that seems an oversimplification, but my guess is that in the future, we’ll be paying much more careful attention to the end uses of data and have to make some difficult decisions about these results. In light of cities moving to models of resilience and the recent release of President Obama’s climate commitments, there will be major implications for technology resources as well as the information that is passed through those networks.

 

Jake Pollack

Jake has worked in sustainability leadership settings internationally for the last six years in higher education and is currently the program manager for the UO Sustainability Leadership Certificate Program. He has mentored and trained students and professionals in aspects of sustainability ranging from cross-cultural communication to organizational transformation. His PhD research examined interdisciplinary and collaborative models of sustainability and a new triple bottom line of resilience, integrity, and commitment. Though his work in the field began in ecovillages and grassroots centers of innovation, he is now interested in the scale of cities and cultivating a cross-sector platform for professionals who wish to accelerate and incubate projects that address our most significant sustainability challenges.