E-waste has always been riddled by its complexities, from the lead, mercury, nickel and cadmium it contains that could be toxic if handled improperly to the increased amount of electronic devices we’re all so addicted to (sales in electronic products doubled between 1997 and 2009, according to the EPA) and the fact that only 40 percent of end-of-life electronics were collected for recycling in 2013. But what if instead of the complicated mess of scrapping down or refurbishing electronics, our devices quickly and safely broke down in landfills? The innovations over the past few years might not make that sound so crazy. Could biodegradable electronics really be the answer to the e-waste crisis?
The New Wave of Biodegradable Tech
In 2012, Nature was already reporting on the biodegradable components of waste-away tech. The idea was to make technology dissolve once ready to be thrown out, and in water no less. The experiments looked towards adjusting the silicon to dissolve faster and using magnesium to make devices more dissolvable. The applications could be used in electronics devices, and medical implants as well.Around the same time, an article in materialstoday stated, “Numerous materials with a bio-origin have been identified as suitable substrates for the fabrication of organic electronics. […] Such materials enable several functionalities: low-cost, non-toxicity, biodegradability and often biocompatibility and bioresorbability for biomedical applications.”
Materials postulated for biodegradable devices involve shocking, everyday items like paper, silk and gelatin. Other possibilities looked into for the building blocks of green electronics are polysaccharides, p-conjugated molecules and DNA itself. These materials all have the potential to be transferred into practical electrical components. For instance, DNA can be processed to form a film with optical transparency and functional circuits have been printed right onto paper.
This year, wood is the word in biodegradable tech. Computer chips can be wood-based, making them biodegradable. The new wooden semiconductor comes out of the University of Wisconsin, in conjunction with the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Products Laboratory.
The group commented on just how much streamlining there is to do with the microchip: “In a typical semiconductor electronic chip, the active region comprises the top thin layer and is only a small portion of the chip, whereas the bottom substrate that holds the chip consists of more than 99 percent of the semiconductor materials. In microwave chips for wireless functions, besides the waste of the bottom substrate, only a tiny fraction of the lateral chip area is used for the required active transistors/diodes with the rest being used only for carrying other non-active components.”
The chip is made out of what’s called cellulose nanofibril, which is made from the basic building block of cell walls in most green plants, cellulose. Cellulose nanofibril is made by breaking down wood until the fibers are so small they can be measured in nanometers. At that composition, wood starts to take on the properties of plastic.
In practical terms, researchers in Norway from Sintef succeeded in making electrical components with magnesium circuits on thin silicon, which dissolve in water in just a few hours.
Biodegradable Tech and the Electronic Recycling Process
Yet it does raise an interesting issue: Biodegradable electronics would certainly cause a different way of going about recycling. Since there are no models in place at the present time, one can only speculate.Depending on how ubiquitous biodegradable technology becomes, biodegradable parts may have to still be separated out of the actual device, while the other parts get reused.
Also, how long will more permanent tech stay in the market? Will old, refurbished tech always have a place in lower income areas or on the used market? Hopefully they would, because instead of saving precious metals, electronics recycling would save a tree. And what about the tech companies that might be slow or completely resistant to adopting biodegradable tech? A reorganization of the recycling process may be required: biodegradable tech and non-biodegradable.
And then there’s still the issue of proper disposal. Will businesses and individuals just throw their biodegradable items into non-biodegradable plastic bags like we tend to now? Data destruction services might still need to be provided, since throwing a cell phone into a landfill is hardly secure, unless the data storage component can be dissolved with water in a matter of two hours. The only certainty here is that the recycling process would have to adapt.
Yet we’re certainly living in an exciting time in terms of green tech. Despite the possible changes, imagine living in a world where a used cell phone just rots away safely and quickly instead of leaking toxic byproducts into the Earth. Having to heavily police the import and export of hazardous e-waste would be a nuisance of the past, and proper storage of old electronics would get easier. Biodegradable tech truly would cut right to the heart of the e-waste problem.