THE SEI MISSIONThe Illinois Sustainable Technology Center (ISTC), located at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), is spearheading the Sustainable Electronics Initiative (SEI), a consortium dedicated to the development and implementation of more sustainable systems for designing, producing, remanufacturing, and recycling electronic devices.

SEI conducts collaborative research, facilitates networking and information exchange among participants, promotes technology diffusion via demonstration projects, and provides forums for the discussion of policy and legislation.

Members of SEI include manufacturers, academia, nonprofit organizations, government agencies, retailers, designers, refurbishers, and recyclers. SEI has a variety of membership levels, including our corporate affiliates program.

For more information on SEI membership, please visit our website at

www.sustainelectronics.illinois.edu

or contact William Bullock at

wbullock@illinois.edu or 217.333.8940.

ResearchEducation Data ManagementTechnical Assistance

We offer programs in

Multidisciplinary teams of research faculty and students from design, engineering, and business address leading-edge challenges. Specifically, materials, products, processes, specifications, and delivery mecha-nisms are designed and developed that focus on more sustainable, energy-efficient, electronics systems. An exchange program facilitates personnel exchanges between SEI members and participating universities to support mutually agreed-upon research and teaching. For example, corporate representatives may wish to be involved in research and teaching projects to share knowledge at the university and conversely, faculty and students may join corporate teams to learn and help advance research. SEI conducts and facilitates collaborative research in the following areas:

RefWorks Database

To facilitate access to peer-reviewed materials on the many aspects of electronic products and their interactions with the environment, SEI maintains an online, searchable bibliographic database of resources related to sustainable electronics and e-waste issues. Thousands of references are included, consisting of peer-reviewed journal literature, policy papers, conference papers, book chapters, and other documents related to sustainable electronics and e-waste. These references cover the following categories:

DesignLife CycleProcessingWaste Management Remanufacturing LogisticsMaterialsPolicy

Research

Business PracticesRecycling/Refurbishing Collection ProcessHealth Impacts EducationE-waste Policy Consumer InformationStatistics Engineering/Design

Links to the database and to a tutorial explaining its features and functions is available at

www.sustainelectronics.illinois.edu/research/refworks.cfm.

In the SEI education program, students, faculty, industrial participants, and agencies have regular interaction through course work, research projects, internships, mentoring, and an annual interna-tional E-Waste Design competition. Potential employers can observe student performance and recruit potential employees. The Internship Program facilitates arrangements for student interns to work in the corporate setting and for student mentoring by industry profession-als. Arrangements can be made for endowed chairs or professorships to support the research and education

DesignSustainability ProcessingLife Cycle RemanufacturingMaterials

mission of SEI, participating universities, and corporate affiliates. An industrial design course on e-waste prevention, recycling, and manage-ment has already been developed and is currently being taught to both undergraduate and graduate students. The annual International Sustainable E-Waste Design Com-petition challenges college students around the world to create useful products from electronic waste.

For more information about these initiatives, please visit

www.ewaste.illinois.edu

SEI education programs cover the following aspects of sustainable electronics:

Education

Data ManagementCurrent methods for tracking the origin, use, and management of e-waste are extremely limited. The U.S. EPA currently estimates the amount of electronic products sold, stored, recycled, disposed of, and exported in the U.S. using a series of assumptions and estimates based on market research data for sales and data from electronics collection programs along with some govern-

ment statistics for sales. These data are usually not complete or current and are developed only for purposes of deriving national estimates. Additionally, the information is woe-fully inadequate for making strategic decisions regarding feedstock, market, and system management. SEI facilitates the development of the complete, accurate, and useful data collection and management needed to establish a more sustainable e-waste management system.

The SEI is rapidly assimilating databases from a variety of industry and agency sources. These resources will be used to create data manage-ment programs that incorporate quality, marketing, performance, compliance, demographics, and inventory.

In the SEI education program, students, faculty, industrial participants, and agencies have regular interaction through course work, research projects, internships, mentoring, and an annual international E-Waste Design competition.

Technical Assistance

Awareness LogisticsDemographics PolicyPilot Programs Recycler Certification

SEI technical assistance programs include providing assistance to industry, communities, universities, schools, and other vested interests with respect to the following:

ADOP2T Model

Pilot programs and demonstration projects will be based on the Acceler-ated Diffusion of Pollution Prevention Technologies (ADOP2T) program developed by the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center (ISTC). ADOP2T establishes showcase demonstration sites in actual facilities in a chosen industrial sector—in the case of SEI, electronics manufacturing, recycling, refurbishing, or design. In exchange for participating, the facility receives

Ask an Expert

Questions related to electronic waste issues, sustainable electronics design, improving electronics manufacturing processes, and related topics can be submitted via an online form. SEI staff members will provide one hour of free Internet and/or literature searches related to your sustainable electronics questions. Also

ISTC assistance in setting up, testing, and evaluating a new technology during the pilot period.

ADOP2T creates an industry-driven incubator for demonstration, pilot testing, and ultimately adoption of innovative technologies and practices. The ADOP2T model has been successfully implemented in the metal finishing industry, and work is under way on using the model in the metal fabricating industry.

See

www.istc.illinois.edu/tech/adop2t.cfmfor more information on ADOP2T

provided is input from ISTC staff sci-entists and/or referrals to external contacts for further information on technical questions. Responses can be expected within a week (usually within 1–2 business days). Citizens, government agencies, businesses, nonprofit groups, and academic institutions are all invited to use this free service.

Questions and answers received via this service are archived and searchable on the SEI website

www.sustainelectronics.illinois.edu

An extensive collection of resources is also provided. Visit

www.sustainelectronics.illinois.edu/services/askexpert.cfm

Ask an Expert questions and answers are integrated into relevant resource collections.

Wasteful behavior that is not sustainable is not only bad for the environment — it is also bad for the bottom line. Recognition of this relation-ship will be key to business success and competitiveness in the coming decades. Electronic waste is a prime example of wasteful behavior that cannot be sustained. It is a growing worldwide problem that needs to be addressed. Americans own almost 3 billion electronic products; as new products are purchased, unused products are stored or discarded at alarming rates. According to the U.S. Environ-mental Protection Agency, about two-thirds of the elec-tronic devices removed from service were still in working order; of that, only about 15% of that material is recycled while the rest is landfilled.

As electronic products become increasingly part of our daily lives and of our waste stream, it is important to consider the potential health risks associated with the materials contained in these products. People can be exposed to some of the hazards associ-ated with electronic products and e-waste in a variety of ways. Occupational and public exposure occur from manufacturing plants as well as at recycling and refurbishing facilities. Consumers may be exposed to substances as part of their everyday use of devices or as the result of direct or indirect contamination of the environment. For example, air pollution caused by the incineration of e-waste or groundwater contamination resulting from inadvertent leaching of materials from landfills can affect public health.

Despite a unique set of challenges, there are promising opportunities to improve sustainability in the electronics sector. Approaches to prod-uct development and manu-facturing that minimize waste and the use of hazardous materials and improved ways of collecting, sorting, reusing, refurbishing, repairing, and remanufacturing are needed. Given the complexity of the e-waste problem, a rigorous multidisciplinary academic analysis of these products’ life cycles is a prerequisite to developing and implementing systems to sustainably produce, utilize and eventually recycle these products.

ELECTRONIC WASTE: MOVING FROM PROBLEM TO OPPORTUNITY

Illinois Sustainable Technology Center1 Hazelwood DriveChampaign, IL 61820a division of the Institute of Natural Resource Sustainability at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign