As the world grows “smarter” through the adoption of smartphones, smart fridges, and entire smart houses, the carbon cost of that technology grows, too.
In the last decade, electronic waste has become one of the fastest-growing waste streams in the world.
According to The World Counts, the globe generates about 50 million tons of e-waste every year. That’s the equivalent of 1,000 laptops being trashed every second.
After they’re shipped off to landfills and incinerated, the trash releases toxic chemicals including lead, cadmium, arsenic, mercury, and so much more, which can cause disastrous health effects on the populations that live near those trash sites.
Fortunately, Franziska Kerber — a university student at FH Joanneum in Graz, Austria — has dreamed up a solution that helps carve away at that behemoth problem: electronics made out of recyclable, dissolvable paper.
On September 11, Kerber’s invention “Pape” — or Paper Electronics — earned global recognition when it was named a national winner of the 2024 James Dyson Awards.
When she entered the scientific competition, Kerber demonstrated her invention with the creation of several small electronics made out of paper materials, including a fully-functional WiFi router and smoke detector.
“Small electronic devices are especially prone to ending up in household waste due to unclear disposal systems and their small size, so there is significant potential to develop a more user-friendly end-of-life system,” Kerber wrote on the James Dyson Award website.
“With this in mind, I aimed to move beyond a simple recycling solution to a circular one, ensuring long-term sustainability.”
Kerber’s invention hinges on crafting a dissolvable and recyclable PCB board out of compressed “paper pulp.”
A printed circuit board (PCB) is a board that can be found in nearly all modern electronic devices, like phones, tablets, and smartwatches.
But even companies that have started incorporating a “dissolution” step into the end life of their products require deconstruction to break down and recover the PCB board before it can be recycled.
With Kerber’s PAPE products, users don’t need to take the device apart to recycle it.
“By implementing a user-friendly return option, manufacturers can efficiently dissolve all returned items, potentially reusing electronic components,” Kerber explained.
As a university student, Kerber does not currently have the means to produce her PAPE products on a massive scale or extend her scope beyond routers and smoke detectors.
But she’s hoping that her invention sparks a conversation about sustainable e-waste. And her recent James Dyson Award win adds validity to that dream.
“Rapidly advancing technology, which forms the core of many devices, becomes obsolete much faster than the structural elements, which are often made from plastics that can last thousands of years,” Kerber poses.
PAPE, Kerber says, has a “designed end-of-life system” which anticipates obsolescence.
“Does anyone want to use a thousand-year-old computer?” Kerber asks. “Of course not. … This ensures a sustainable and reliable system without hindering technological advancement.”
Click the video below to see Kerber's invention:
Header image courtesy of Dyson
