Sustainable Electronic Recycling

Client: Franck Courbon, Ethicronics <franck@ethicronics.com>

Recycling is a challenges posed by electronics devices. This project involves the design and own implementation of a data gathering solution for better electronics recycling. The target is an open source populated printed circuit board.

Proposed modification:

Global Component Exchange

There are many open-source designs for printed circuit boards (PCBs), making it very easy to order a small manufacturing run of an electronic device for very little cost. But a PCB is not functional without components, and the industry has a huge problem of components that are simply thrown away whenever an appliance is trashed. Your task is to create a design tool that gathers data on PCBs being discarded in rich countries, matching the components to low-cost open source PCBs that need to be populated with components elsewhere in the world, in order to solve local problems.

Or else:

Less Wasteful Electronics

There are many open-source designs for printed circuit boards (PCBs), but products made this way often get thrown away, which is wasteful of components that could be recycled. Your task is to create a system that analyses which components on an open source PCB could be re-used, offering them via an online market for recycling into different products (based on other open source PCBs) in future.

Franck's final suggestion

Enabling electronics re-use

Electronics recycling is one of the challenges resulting from electronics being everywhere. Full products get thrown away with working components, which is wasteful of components that could be re-used. Your task is to create a system that analyses which components could be re-used.