Raising public awareness on electronic waste as a source of valuable materials (AWARE)
a Wider Society Learning project of
AWARE. Raising public awareness on electronic waste as a source of valuable materials
The aim of the project is to increase the share of waste ending up in official take-back systems instead of losing the resource to waste disposal or incineration plants and collection outside official take-back systems. To achieve that, the project focuses on education and involvement of school children, both to raise the awareness of end-of-life electronics as a resource, and through them to bring the message into families and the society as whole.
Videos
News
Four lessons learned from PROMETIA Tech Tour 2022 – Northern Sweden
During 4 days, young students and researchers from 9 different institutions gathered in Sweden to visit mines, smelters, R&D centers and industrial plants. Here is the report of Carlos Quintero (SOLVOMET/SIM² KU Leuven).
Global perspectives on reprocessing of mine tailings (High-level expert panel)
On March 10, 2022, the joint NEMO/CROCODILE/TARANTULA expert panel discussed the “Global perspectives on the reprocessing of mine tailings”. The objective was to find common ground and to enable the elaboration of specific EU policy recommendations.
Boosting the repair & recycling options for EoL electrical consumer products
The Lifecycle Engineering research group (SIM²) has explored a new procedure to identify EoL electrical products by evaluating an image of the device’s product label. The work was published in Journal of Industrial Ecology.
Recovery of copper, zinc and lead from photovoltaic panel residues
Within the EU ETN SULTAN and PEACOC projects, SOLVOMET/SIM2 KU Leuven and VITO researchers developed a process to recover copper, zinc and lead from chloride leachates of PV residues. The work was published in RSC Advances.
Recovery of REEs from spent fluorescent lamps using methanesulfonic acid (MSA)
SIM²/SOLVOMET developed a new solvometallurgical process, using methanesulfonic acid (MSA), for the selective recovery of REEs from spent fluorescent lamps. The work was published in Industrial Engineering and Chemistry Research.
Rare-earth recycling needs market intervention (Nature Reviews Materials)
SIM2 KU Leuven’s Koen Binnemans and Peter Tom Jones published a Comment article “Rare-earth recycling needs market intervention” in Nature Reviews Materials (IF = 75). The paper was co-authored by magnet expert Paul McGuiness.
How to recover and purify platinum-group metals from spent autocatalysts?
SOLVOMET/SIM2 KU Leuven researchers developed three methods to recover & purify Pd, Pt and Rh from spent autocatalysts. This work, which was performed in EU PLATIRUS, is featured in journal Johnson Matthey Technology Review.
Slovenian children know e-waste well
As an external collaborator in the AWARE project we also conducted eco-workshops for children in Slovenia in order to present them e-waste and its proper handling. In the company ZEOS, d.o.o. from Slovenia, we have been dealing with the proper management...
E-waste recycling (school kid) heroes in the making!
The EIT RawMaterials AWARE team went to the Zevensprong (Leuven, BE) to talk to 40 primary school kids about the importance of e-waste recycling. Through this experience, the kids were motivated to become real recycling heroes.
Is data the new gold? A case study for repair data
In collaboration with TU Berlin, the SIM² KU Leuven Lifecycle Engineering (LCE) research group published a study that provides key knowledge on potential opportunities and limits of repair data for specific repair applications.