Current Projects
Sustainable E-Waste Design Competition
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During the Spring 2009 semester, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) students were challenged to create appealing, useful products from e-waste. Participants were encouraged to enroll in a School of Art and Design course on sustainability and e-waste issues (ARTD 391/591) taught by industrial design professor William Bullock. Students in this class conducted an e-waste collection on campus to gather unused CPUs, monitors, keyboards, mice, printers, scanners and cell phones as fodder for design competition projects. Educational goals for the students included learning about ways to re-use e-waste for new and productive means, exploring ideas for how to address e-waste problems, and contributing to the body of knowledge that advances the practice of environmentally responsible product design for current and future computing technology products.
Participants worked in groups of no more than five people, and their creations were displayed during a public competition event, held April 16, 2009 on the UIUC Quad. Eighty-one students from various disciplines, divided into 21 teams, competed in the contest, which awarded $15,000 in tuition support and other prizes. Judges included representatives from the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center; the Chicago Center for Neighborhood Technology; Dell Inc.; the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity Bureau of Energy and Recycling; Microsoft Corp.; Wal-Mart Stores Inc.; the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency; and West Monroe Partners LLC, Chicago.
For more information on the class and competition, visit the Sustainable E-waste Design Competition web site or contact William Bullock at 217-265-0873.
For links to press coverage of the competition, see the Sustainable Electronics Initiative (SEI) Press Coverage page.
For images from the collection event and competition, see the SEI Photo Gallery.
Electronics & Sustainability: Design for Energy and the Environment
The Sustainable Electronics Initiative (SEI) and Illinois Sustainable Technology Center (ISTC), a unit of the Institute of Natural Resource Sustainability at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, are hosting a symposium entitled Electronics & Sustainability: Design for Energy and the Environment, February 23-24, 2010 at the I Hotel and Conference Center on the campus of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
For more information, visit the Symposia page on this web site.
Design for Energy and the Environment Laboratory
The Design for Energy and the Environment Laboratory (DEE Lab) conducts collaborative product design and development research focusing on sustainable, energy-efficient products and product systems. Multidisciplinary teams of research faculty and students from design, engineering, and marketing address leading-edge challenges in semester-long projects. Projects provide an opportunity to address problems with a fresh, independent perspective outside the typical corporate routine. Through spon¬sored projects, members have the opportunity to work with and assess potential hires. DEE Lab is located at ISTC, a neutral site facilitating research collaboration and research sharing between competitors.
More information coming soon.