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ecoEDA: Recycling E-waste During Electronics Design

Published: 29 October 2023 Publication History

Abstract

The amount of e-waste generated by discarding devices is enormous but options for recycling remain limited. However, inside a discarded device (from consumer devices to one's own prototypes), an electronics designer could find dozens to thousands of reusable components, including microcontrollers, sensors, voltage regulators, etc. Despite this, existing electronic design tools assume users will buy all components anew. To tackle this, we propose ecoEDA, an interactive tool that enables electronics designers to explore recycling electronic components during the design process. We accomplish this via (1) creating suggestions to assist users in identifying and designing with recycled components; and (2) maintaining a library of useful data relevant to reuse (e.g., allowing users to find which devices contain which components). Through example use-cases, we demonstrate how our tool can enable various pathways to recycling e-waste. To evaluate it, we conducted a user study where participants used our tool to create an electronic schematic with components from torn-down e-waste devices. We found that participants’ designs made with ecoEDA featured an average of 66% of recycled components. Last, we reflect on challenges and opportunities for building software that promotes e-waste reuse.

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  1. ecoEDA: Recycling E-waste During Electronics Design

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    cover image ACM Conferences
    UIST '23: Proceedings of the 36th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology
    October 2023
    1825 pages
    ISBN:9798400701320
    DOI:10.1145/3586183
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    Published: 29 October 2023

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    1. Sustainability
    2. electronic design automation (EDA)
    3. recycling
    4. reuse

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    Cited By

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    • (2024)Challenges and Opportunities in Using Electronic Prototyping as a Maker ToolProceedings of the XXIII Brazilian Symposium on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3702038.3702092(1-15)Online publication date: 7-Oct-2024
    • (2024)Unmake to Remake: Materiality-Driven Rapid PrototypingACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction10.1145/368527031:6(1-31)Online publication date: 21-Aug-2024
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