Sustainable Electronics Campus Consortium Meeting 11/17: Update on Illini Gadget Garage Project

The Sustainable Electronics Initiative (SEI) is an ISTC project focused on the development and implementation of a more sustainable system for designing, producing, using, and managing electronic devices. Part of SEI is the coordination of a loose group of staff, faculty, and students interested in sustainable electronics research, education, and the host of environmental and social impacts surrounding electronic devices throughout their product life cycles–the UI Sustainable Electronics Campus Consortium. There will be a consortium meeting at ISTC in Champaign from 2:00 to 3:00 PM tomorrow, Tuesday, November 17, to discuss the status of the Illini Gadget Garage project. In particular, the project team wish to discuss ideas for locations around campus for “pop-up” electronics repair clinics, fundraising, and ideas for how to make the Gadget Garage financially self-sustaining beyond its seed funding. This meeting is open to anyone with an interest in the project–you need not have ever attended a consortium meeting before. If you wish to receive consortium emails and meeting announcements in the future, you may sign up for the mailing list at tomorrow’s meeting, or by sending a request to Joy Scrogum.

 

The Illini Gadget Garage is a collaboration of the Sustainable Electronics Initiative, the UI School of Art and Design, and the UI Graduate School of Library and Information Science, and is focused on launching a repair center for student and staff owned electronic devices, with seed funding from the Student Sustainability Committee. This venture is meant to extend the useful life of products while providing experiential learning for students (through associated classes, volunteering, and participation in the iFixit Technical Writing Project), and empowering people to see do-it-yourself repair as a viable option for addressing minor damage and performance issues. The space currently occupied by the Gadget Garage is in need of several renovations to bring it up to compliance with ADA standards, and thus there has been a delay in the project proceeding as planned, open to the entire campus community in a fixed location. While additional funds are sought to complete the renovations, “pop-up” repair clinics will be held at already accessible places across campus. Classes will continue to be held in what will eventually be the fixed location for the Gadget Garage; student volunteers are also working with “test pilots” in the space so they can gain experience with working with the public, checking in patrons, and logging impacts (e.g. number of devices repaired, pounds diverted from the landfill through repair, etc.). Read more about the project and developments on the SEI blog and the SEI web site.

 

Bring your ideas to the table for discussion tomorrow, or just come to listen and learn more about how you can get involved. No RSVP is necessary; this is an informal discussion, and will be held in the Stephen J. Warner conference room. If you’re unable to attend the meeting, but have questions or suggestions, please contact Joy Scrogum.

 

Illini Gadget Garage identifying mark
Identifying mark developed by Lu Lawrence, Amanda Henderson, and Ruchita Mandhre, as part of ARTD 591/391 with Professor William Bullock.

International e-waste competition underway

Current college/university students and recent graduates have an opportunity to create useful and appealing products from e-waste—computers, printers, cell phones and similar materials that would normally end up in landfills. And their efforts could win them prizes.

The International E-Waste Design Competition (www.ewaste.illinois.edu), allows 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 have yet to be announced. The Sustainable Electronics Initiative (SEI) (www.sustainelectronics.illinois.edu) and the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center (ISTC) (www.istc.illinois.edu) coordinate the competition.

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. That series will be focused on sustainable electronics. The awards presentation will also be broadcast as a webinar.

As part of their entry, participants will upload a “video commercial” for their project to YouTube. (See “Registration” on the competition web site for complete entry requirements.) Expert jurors from industry, professional organizations, government agencies, universities and non-profits will award monetary prizes to individuals or teams in each category, for a total of six prizes. Honorary mention awards may be given at the discretion of the judges. Competition sponsors have included leading manufacturers, retailers and professional organizations, and will be listed on the competition site as they are confirmed.

Instructors at colleges, universities and trade schools are encouraged to promote this competition to their students and to consider incorporating entry into course curricula. Various institutions beyond The University of Illinois have done this over the years, particularly with industrial design courses. The competition is open to students from all disciplines. Past entries have been received from students in mechanical engineering, electronic engineering, biomedical engineering, industrial design, and fine and applied arts.

The competition began as a local event on the campus of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2009. William Bullock, a professor of Industrial Design with the School of Art + Design taught a course on e-waste issues. As part of that class, the students conducted an e-waste collection on campus to gather unused CPUs, monitors, keyboards, mice, printers, scanners and cell phones as fodder for design projects. From that, the idea for a local reuse competition was born, and the competition was open to the entire campus. In 2010, the competition expanded to a global scale where applicants were asked to submit ideas online, including videos of their entries. The competition has grown to encompass ideas for waste prevention as well as waste reuse.

E-waste is an important social and environmental issue. 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.

For more information on entering the competition, incorporating it into courses, or being a sponsor, contact Joy Scrogum, SEI Education Coordinator, jscrogum@illinois.edu or at 217-333-8948. For videos from last year’s competition, see www.ewaste.illinois.edu/.