The National Recycling Coalition predicts that 500 million computers
will become obsolete by 2007. The selected winners of the Cradle to
Cradle Electronics Design Challenge are being recognized for their
creative electronic designs that contain fewer toxic components,
require fewer materials to make, and generate less waste at the end of
the consumer electronics product's useful life. The winners were
presented with awards today at the 2004 Institute of Electrical and
Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Symposium for Electronics and the
Environment in Scottsdale, AZ. The IEEE Symposium (http://www.ieee.org)
is the leading forum worldwide for electronics industry leaders to
explore the latest environmental aspects of design, manufacturing,
research, development, recycling and marketing of electronics products.
The first place winning design, called "LINC," was submitted by a
University of Cincinnati student, Brett Christie. It features a
compact, solar powered hand-held unit that replaces multiple electronic
devices such as WiFi Internet, GPS Navigation, Movie Player, Music
Player and E-Book. Customers return the LINC unit to the manufacturer,
where its components are recycled to create new LINC units.
The second place design, called "Ecoprojection," was submitted by a
team of students, Junko Hosokawa, Stuart Ottenritter, John Gualtieri
and Michael Dickson, from Virginia Tech at Blacksburg. "Ecoprojection"
replaces the cathode ray tubes and plasma screen technologies in
personal computers (PCs) by using a full color laser to project images
onto a variety of surfaces. This uniquely designed PC also includes a
modular CPU (central processing unit) with components that can be taken
out while the machine is running. The components can be sent back to
the manufacturer when upgrades are desired. This design showcases novel
materials such as: a releasable adhesive for printed circuit boards,
and plastics and metals that return to their standard shape with
minimal reprocessing, thereby expediting reuse of the material.
The third place design, called "bioPC," was submitted by a team of
students, Summer Hill, Pooja Goyal, Joe Bradley and Ben Shao, from the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "bioPC" proposes the use of
a type of bacteria, Bacteriorhodsin (BR) for information storage; the
personal computer is made from biodegradable plastic materials, which
are designed to be returned to a municipal composting facility at the
end of the personal computer's useful life.
The first and second place winners receive $5,000 each, donated by
Hewlett-Packard and IBM. The third place winner receives $4,000,
donated by Lexmark Corporation and the Consumer Electronics
Association.
More information on the Cradle to Cradle Electronics Design Challenge
is available at: http://www.greenblue.org/edesign . More information on
the Resource Conservation Challenge is available at:
http://www.epa.gov/rcc
For more info, please contact Dave Ryan, 202-564-7827 / ryan.dave@epa.gov