Artistic e-waste

Team

Yannick Ilunga: Chemical Engineering (UCT)
Gugulethu Mhlanga: Mechanical Engineering (UCT)

We have explosive ideas that entail a couple of simple but very cost effective processes to reuse old and thrown away digital products….

Our Idea

• For digital products that are damaged or beyond repair, creative artistic products can be made out of it. Our inspiration was derived from the fact that South Africa is a country well known for its monuments, artistic designs and places/structures of interest like the newly built SOCCER CITY.

We had the idea of creating a miniature Soccer City that would have an attractive set of lights for display in a stadium or museum or even at the International Airport. We saw some great images of similar products already being used in China, like this viper completely made out of the keys of a keyboard. You should check it out.

Imagine what we could do! Other robotic futuristic human-like sculptures can be made out of the waste. At U.C.T we have two of them in the Library and the Chemical Engineering Building. This could pave the way to an ‘E-waste Art Industry’ or sculpturing shop for electronic waste possibly joining forces with some already existing sculpture markets.  These products could be from hand held to room sized art and they could be placed in museums, parks and tourist destinations.

Impact to South Africa

Open a job market for not only artists but also people who could be employed to collect or break down the products and set them up after design completion.

• Functioning electronic boards from old computers can be used by being repaired (if damaged) and resold, e.g. the RAM chips. Collection of old electronic products can be done in a store or at the request of the customer and when a product is brought back to the store; the returner will be rewarded with a small amount of cash. If the product becomes dismantled, e.g. the battery separated from the laptop, the amount would increase further. We conducted a small student survey on this and we had a 90% agreement they would engage in this.

• This one involves recycling plastic from digital products, especially those made out of highly recyclable polycarbonate plastic, and using it to contribute to the manufacturing of other products such as toys, fans and more that would need plastic. Since polycarbonate, when melted and remoulded becomes weaker it can be made into those products that do not need strong plastics and working with some experts, we could learn more ways to process it.

Hence nothing remains to be burnt, stored in stacks or buried. Digital waste is turned into environmentally friendly products and jobs are created in the process.