Electronic waste (e-waste), the discarding of electronic devices, is one of the largest growing forms of waste in the world. The United States produces a large portion of this e-waste, together with China accounting for over a third of worldwide e-waste (Casey, 2015). Our project seeks to rectify this problem in the Lafayette College community, and our work will hopefully inspire other projects to remedy this issue in other communities. The Lafayette community provides an excellent example of the mentality, particularly in the United States, that propagates growth in the e-waste pile-up. Currently, there is an extensive program laid out on the college’s website on how to recycle the e-waste. The program, while still finding its footing, creates different routes to reuse, donate, or recycle “All college-owned computers and electronic devices that are being replaced (Electronics Recycling, its.lafayette.edu).” However, beyond Lafayette’s Electronics Recycling Day (Recycling, sustainability.lafayette.edu) during Earth Week in April, the college does not have any system in place for students to understand how to recycle their electronic waste. Students are constantly in possession of smartphones, laptops, and televisions all possess rare and valuable materials that continually go to waste at Lafayette College. To raise awareness of electronic waste build up at Lafayette College and to help students understand why e-waste is a serious problem that deserves attention, our project seeks to map the electronics lifecycle in the Lafayette College community and to do so in a way that will best stimulate change in how students prioritize proper disposal of their own electronic waste.

To best appeal to the Lafayette students, we decided to focus on mapping the life-cycle of the iPhone, most closely focusing on the iPhone 6s. The iPhone is the most common smartphone at Lafayette, carried by 84% of students surveyed, and Apple is an dominant presence in the consumer electronics arena (Mapping the E-Waste Lifecycle, 2017). The iPhone 6s was the world’s highest selling phone in 2016 (Apple iPhone 6s Crowned World’s Best-Selling Smartphone, Forbes). We believe this is the product will generate the largest interest in our work. The large image of the iPhone should quickly draw the eye, as the smartphone is likely the most commonly used electronic device on campus, considering the average person checks their phone 110 times a day (How often to do check your phone, dailymail.co). The raw materials in an iPhone are also very similar to the materials in the average computer, and many are commonly found in electronics everywhere.

Our map will be modelled in part after a technical cost model of economic analysis, an approach through which a product is broken down into its basic components and analyzed as such. Similarly, we are mapping the lifecycle of each of the three products from their raw materials, to the centralization and assembly of its components, distribution and sales, average usage and lifetime, and disposal or recycling. The goal is not to advise students on how to deal with their own devices. Campaigning what students are doing wrong would not only be hypocritical, it would be ineffective because it would students defensive about an issue they have no idea how to rectify. We found that 57% of Lafayette students surveyed do not know what e-waste is, let alone what to do with their own (Mapping the E-Waste Lifecycle, 2017). Our goal is to inform them of the issue and how they contribute to the e-waste problem. We will make suggestions in our report for the Office of Sustainability, or possibly another capstone project, to move forward with addressing student e-waste.

Solely researching and documenting our findings is not enough. Students at Lafayette, and consumers in general, are unlikely to read a paper about a seldom talked about issue that does not provide a simple and direct academic or economic incentive. Students at Lafayette also receive daily emails from Calendar of Events, informing them of multiple lunch talks and presentations that will be occurring in the coming days, and unfortunately a talk on electronic waste is unlikely to stand out as a must-attend event. Besides just a general lack of knowledge on the subject of electronic waste, there is also a lack of proper motivation to learn about this project and its resulting findings. This important challenge has sparked our idea of creating a physical map for the e-waste lifecycle at Lafayette, focusing almost completely on the iPhone. By creating a separate display that physically “maps” the life-cycle, we believe the information will catch the eye of students. The display that we will produce will be large, colorful, and minimalist enough to convey the relatable ideas on the posters, hopefully drawing in the busy student. Though fitting enough information on the display will be challenging, compelling images and minimal description should be able to convey all necessary information if done on large displays.

Our student survey on electronic waste provides more background information on how Lafayette students dispose of and interact with their electronics. The survey questions are as follows: Do you know what e-waste is? What brand of cell phone/computer/tv do you have (if any)? Which electronic device do you use the most? How often do you replace each electronic device? Do you know how to recycle your electronic waste? How well do you know Lafayette’s policy on electronic waste? What do you usually do with each of these electronic devices when you are done with them? Do you know about electronics recycling day?

Upon speaking with the Marie Fechik-Kirk, the Director of the Office of Sustainability, we have come across another problem, which is that even though Lafayette’s system seems well organized from the site description, it is not so in practice. The Office of Sustainability is a new department, relying heavily on student contribution rather than administrative help, and is still working on centralizing many different pockets of passionate recycling initiatives across campus. This pertains to our project in that obtaining information on how the school deals with its e-waste is difficult without a centralized understanding of who is performing what function. There is no way to solve the problem other than waiting for centralization to occur. We recommend that future groups seek to gather information through the involved departments, such as The Office of Sustainability, Information Technology Services, Plant Operations, and the organizations through which the college recycles. For Electronics Recycling Day, the organization is Responsible Recycling Services, and the green bins used for batteries and ink cartridges are taken care of by Big Green Box.

This project will not be able to serve its purpose if it does not change how students think about their electronic waste. Our goal at this step in the process is to provide a jumping off point by simply mapping the e-waste life cycle at Lafayette, not changing it. We hope for our display to be visible in all academic buildings, and our structure for the posters should make them both eye-catching and informative. By surveying students, we have also not only made the information more applicable to the Lafayette community, but we have made the students participate in mapping the life-cycle, which should create more interest in the topic as a whole. We will also make sure to provide information that will be gripping, such as the ambiguity in Apple’s sources for tantalum, a rare metal mined in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda.

Through mapping the electronics lifecycle, we hope to lay the groundwork for developing a system to address student e-waste at Lafayette College. This project will educate students about e-waste while providing necessary research as to how the college can create a system to manage it. Through our suggestions, based on internal analysis as well as successfully implemented programs of other academic institutions in the United States, Lafayette can create a model to serve as an example for how the rest of the country treats its electronic devices.