« Completed Open Innovation Challenges

Electronic Waste Challenge

Status: Completed

The Challenge

To design an action plan or strategy so members of the global community of professional chemists and their networks can alleviate the growing hazards of electronic waste (e-waste). In particular, the objective is to minimize the health and safety risks for uneducated and underprivileged workers and their families in India, China and Africa who extract metals from e-waste.

The enormous problem of e-waste from the developed world that ends up in the developing world, legally or illegally, is widely reported. Workers living in extreme poverty, without economic alternatives, labor to extract valuable metals, etc., from the waste under extremely hazardous conditions. Their children are often exposed, too, to dangerous levels of well-known toxins such as lead, cadmium, mercury, chromium, and polyvinyl chlorides. Although many people are trying to address this growing and significant challenge, much more needs to be done. Chemical & Engineering News reports on the conditions for many of the people who do this work in China, India, Africa and elsewhere. For a chilling example, see 60 Minutes

Criteria for Success

The Plan must:

1. Leverage the skills and expertise of the many chemists and their networks that care about this social-environmental dilemma;
2. Be reasonably priced compared to other such efforts; and
3. Provide a clear and detailed path for successful implementation.

Chemists Without Borders has a team of experts and available funding to carry out implementation of viable proposed solutions to this problem.

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