The new wave of technology
As discussed in a previous post, one response to increased producer responsibility is the development of new technologies to make electronic products more sustainable by design. With this has come a new wave of technology, and the emergence of biodegradable products as a more viable and sustainable future for the electronics industry.
New materials have been created in the push to invent more biodegradable electronic products (DeWeerdt, 2017).
A group of scientists from Stanford University managed to create a new semiconductive polymer which can decompose upon contact to weak acid (Lei et al., 2017). By using this material to make electronic devices, such devices can completely disintegrate within a month when treated with mild acid. The acid required is also so mild that the natural environment alone could probably provide appropriate conditions to break down the polymer, according to the researchers.
This is the future of electronic devices. With such advancements in research and technology, biodegradable electronic products will become more and more viable, allowing for non-biodegradable products to be gradually phased out. Hopefully, this will reduce the amount of e-waste generated, if electronic devices themselves become absorbable into the natural environment.
References
DeWeerdt, S. (2017). Totally biodegradable electronics could help solve e-waste problem. Anthropocene. Retrieved 27 March 2022, from https://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/2017/05/totally-biodegradable-electronics-could-help-solve-e-waste-problem/.
Lei, T., Guan, M., Liu, J., Lin, H., Pfattner, R., Shaw, L., McGuire, A. F., Huang, T., Shao, L., Cheng, K., Tok, J. B. -., & Bao, Z. (2017). Biocompatible and totally disintegrable semiconducting polymer for ultrathin and ultralightweight transient electronics. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences – PNAS, 114(20), 5107-5112. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1701478114.