June 4, 2004—The 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 received awards at the 2004 Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Symposium for Electronics and the Environment. The National Recycling Coalition predicts that 500 million computers will become obsolete by 2007.
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,” 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.
The third place design, called “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.
More information on the Cradle to Cradle Electronics Design Challenge and the Resource Conservation Challenge is available online.
