Ghana, an African country on the Gulf of Guinea, imports hundreds of thousands of tons of e-waste every year.
The Basel Convention bans the export of waste containing toxic products, but old refrigerators, slightly obsolete computers and a variety of other electronic waste from North America and Europe find their way through informal circuits, even to Asian or African countries like Ghana.
Some of these countries have little or no facilities to process this waste, so old refrigerators and other scrap end up polluting the soil, water and air and posing a threat to biodiversity.
The Montreal-based UNESCO Chair will seek solutions to these problems, focusing in particular on capacity building to extend the lifecycle of electronic devices and the development of new biomass-derived materials for the design of electronic devices.
capacity building
Clara Santato holds the new UNESCO Chair. His team, made up of European, African and American researchers, will work in particular with the communities that have to deal with the disposal of e-waste coming from the West, in order to better treat these devices on their territory.
How should this e-waste be collected, how should it be separated, how can it be given a second life? And how can this waste be useful in other areas such as green energy or green technologies, for example? explained the full professor at the Polytechnique Montreal.
New materials from biomass
The UNESCO Chair in Green and Sustainable Electronics will also look at designing electronic devices with a low environmental footprint, for example using waste from the forest and food industries.
“We examine these natural materials for their electrochemical or electrical reactions, for example for batteries. The point of studying the electrical response is to find out if there are semiconducting properties. »
— A quote from Clara Santato, holder of the new UNESCO chair
Improving the environmental impact of urban mining processes and designing supercapacitors from used lithium batteries are also among the chair’s projects.
According to a press release from Polytechnique Montréal, the chair targets all links in the lifecycle chain of electronic devices, adopting a holistic approach that integrates science, technological innovation, social innovation and education to transform the production, consumption and management of electronic devices in the world Consistent with UNESCO Sustainable Development Goals.
The Director of Research and Innovation at Polytechnique Montréal said he was extremely proud to welcome the UNESCO Chair in Green and Sustainable Electronics.
“This type of initiative is fully in line with Polytechnique Montréal’s mission to offer society innovative solutions while respecting environmental, social and governance criteria,” explained François Bertrand.
According to the Global E-waste Statistics Partnership, humans generated 53.6 million tons of e-waste in 2019, equivalent to the weight of 350 cruise ships.
Only 18% of this waste has been treated at facilities for recycling or reuse of materials and the vast majority of discarded equipment ultimately contaminates the environment.