From the Guardian Environment Research, there’s 380-950 million tonnes of electronic waste every year, including 5% of electronic waste( 20-50 million tonnes/yr). That’s the same weight of 125,000 fully loaded Boeing 747 or 2174 Sagrada Familias.
Millons OF Tonnes of electronics are disposed each year, triggering a chain of devastating effects.Most units
end up in landfills, where hazardous components seep into groundwater. Of the units recycled, most are shipped to
less regulated emerging markets-often labeled as donations- where their valuable components are extracted with little regard for safety.
And why people didn’t recycle the electronic waste already?The NY Times Research give us some answers:
Thus, the solution is Retronic:
Retronic a platform that have 4 main function aim at tackling the electronic waste problems: 1) trade electronic parts, 2)get electronic related knowledge,3) retrain donate-match system (give life back to broken electronics) 4) raise citizen awareness on electronic waste.
There are 3 key role player: maker (who has the knowledge of how to deal with electronic parts and in need of electronic parts to make his creations), urban miner( who collects and want to trade electronic parts but lack of knowledge and unaware of the harm of dispose electrical parts even if its not valuable) and the consumer ( who have unused or nonfunctional electronic devices and don’t know what to do).
To test the system actually can work, I made my own intervention of the existing system:hacking the hairdryer.
How can I turn my hairdryer into a vacuum cleaner?
(HairDryer Into Vacuum Cleaner Procedures Type 1:Using Waste Materials and Electronic Waste(Broken HairDryer making a Vacuum Cleaner)
(HairDryer Into Vacuum Cleaner Procedures Type 2:Using only hairdryer making a Vacuum Cleaner(rearrange the electric wires))
Donate-Match System works on Re-tronic System:
Re-Tronic System contributed by makers and citizen with certain knowledges will help citizen to identify which electric parts will be possible use in another electronic devices, thus giving another broken electronic device a second life.
Here’s the video showing how re-tronic helping citizen find a second life of their electronic device:
Re-tronic is a project of IaaC, Institute for Advanced Architecture of Cataloniadeveloped at Master in City and Technology in 2016 by:
Students: Chenghuai Zhou
Faculty: Tomás Diez – Mathilde Marengo