EIT RawMaterials Symposium on raising AWAREness on recycling of electronic waste

Date (November-December), 2019 

Leuven, Belgium

within the scope of the project

AWARE: Raising public awareness on electronic waste as a source of valuable materials

AWARE is a Wider Society Learning Project financed by EIT Raw Materials. The project partners are: Technical Research Centre of Finland Ltd. VTT – leader; Hub Innovazione Trentino; Relight S.R.L.; Delft University of Technology; KU Leuven.

The focus of the project is 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. 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. The university students in this project will act as envoys to teach pupils at schools about the relevance of circular economy and recycling of electronic waste.

With this mini-symposium, we aim to bring about a debate about recycling of electronic waste closer to university students and wider public. A group of diverse speakers will present a concept of circular economy and recycling of electronic waster from their own professional perspective, creating a holistic understanding of the topic.

The symposium will start with an academic introduction to circular economy and overview of main concepts and ideas. It will be followed by a presentation of hands-on experience of Recupel, a Belgian NGO, in the collection of electronic waste and awareness raising campaigns. Finally, the representatives of companies dealing with recycling will share their practices and discuss challenges related to recycling of e-waste.

Among the participating students, we would like to invite 1-3 students (master and PhD level) to work further with us to develop an educational material from the presentations of the symposium. This material will be used in 2020 in primary schools in Leuven to teach the pupils about the importance of recycling of electronic waste. If you are interested, please send an e-mail to: katarzyna.janusz@kuleuven.be

Organisers

AWARE Consortium, SUMA Programme, SIM² KU Leuven

Programme

Location venue

Novotel, Park Inn Hotel or KU Leuven location

Registration module

Free registration