Achievement

Open-ended real world projects provide a model for analyzing complex problems related to sustainable electronics. Project X – a semester-long team-based research project challenged trainees to apply sustainability concepts from courses to a specific class of electronic products. The term “X” represents a product class e.g. cell phones, laptops, or game systems. Students defined, collected, and organized information on the product’s function, resources, manufacture, corporate decision-making, use, and end of life. The project required students to extend their thinking to analyze and critique environmental, economic, and social costs and impacts of the product life cycle. Students disassembled two products and created a detailed inventory of subsystems and components, their materials, and manufacturing sites. Trainees moved beyond their disciplinary comfort zone to develop a new understanding of the resources, organizations, and people in the global electronics supply chain.