Maria Khan 

,Muhammad Nafees, Sarah Ayman, Janessa Paderes, Aisha AlObaidly

ENGL 210

Dr. Mary Queen

Revised Problem Statement

Due Date: 22 Oct 2020

TEAM5- PROBLEM STATEMENT.

Problem:

E-Waste can be defined as consumer and business electronic equipment that is not working, unwanted
or has reached the end of its useful life. E Waste is a persistent and significant issue that is prevalent
in today's technologically inclined society. 

E-waste is broadly divided into three types: 

1. Cooling equipment such as fridges and freezers

2. Telecommunications and communication equipment
3. Consumer electronics devices (Phones, Laptops , Monitors, and TV’s)

Each of these categories require a personalized method of disposal due to the differences in the
materials that they constitute. In this proposal, we will highlight the types of e waste that will be
found in an educational community and what we can do to minimise it.

An educational community is a significant source of E waste as we have a prevalent need of multiple

electronic devices that are up to date and functioning properly. E-waste is not generated only by the
personal devices of each of the students but also includes the large number of printers, fax machines,
optical fibres (for wireless communication) and various other devices that are available for use for the
general public. A typical college student, in their 4 years of undergraduate studies, have at least 2
electronic devices - smartphone and laptop. Along with that public printers and charging wires are
used. With a laptop or smartphone, once their lifespan ends, they are typically either sold for spare
parts or stay on a shelf in the house collecting dust. But old charging cables tend to find their way to
the bottom of a dustbin where they prove to be environmentally hazardous. Looking at this example
and magnifying it to other electronic devices we use in our daily lives, we can see how E-waste is a
huge problem.

Purpose:

Subsequently, the objective of our project is to deliver a solution which successfully minimizes E-
waste produced within our specified scope -  constituting various educational institutes- and spread
awareness on the detrimental effects of E-waste, within people.

Objectives:

-Successfully educate people in EC what E-waste is and the danger it poses to the society
environmentally and economically. This can be measured by taking a sample of people in EC and
surveying them before and after we tell them about E-Waste. If more than 60% respondents
understand the hazards created by E-Waste, we will conclude our objective being met.

- Reduce E-waste generated in Education City by a significant amount. While we may not
actually build a prototype, the reduction will be measured through surveying people about our
solution. Our objective will be met if 30-40 % people believe that our proposed solution can lower E-
Waste.

The reasoning behind the difference in percentages for both objectives is that it will be hard to come
up with a universal solution that will meet everybody’s needs and what they believe is better for
society could differ depending on their cultural, educational or demographical backgrounds. Hence,
we chose a lower percentage of acceptance for our objective. But it is necessary that our project
spread awareness on the issue which is why objective A has a higher percentage of acceptance.

Previous research:

E-waste is a term that includes any discarded products which have a plug or battery and no longer
fulfil their intended purpose and, hence, represent no value to the consumer. Electrical and electronic
equipment (EEE) global market has been and still is growing at an exponential rate over the past two
decades. Simultaneously, the life span of these products is becoming shorter. Therefore, e-Waste or
waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) is a rising challenge that businesses in addition to
waste management officials have to face. Policy makers are providing this issue with a significant
amount of attention. There are compelling reasons behind the need to recycle and reuse E-waste. The
main purpose is to preserve the environment and the amount of raw materials available. There are also
economic consequences since extracting, processing and transporting raw materials costs money,
energy and time. The following are some of the reasons why E-waste must be recycled and the
detrimental effects of disposing this waste improperly:  

The Environment: All e-waste contains hazardous materials which range from heavy metals such as
lead and mercury to ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons.  These chemicals are dangerous and can
cause environmental contamination even in small amounts. Most of these toxic substances do not
easily break down which means the contamination will be present for a long period of time. They
leach into the soil polluting ground water as well as air. 

Valuable Raw Materials: Electronics and electrical contain a wide range of precious materials,
including tin, nickel, copper, plastic, etc. In Australia alone, 22 million mobile handsets have been
discarded and that number increases by no less than a million each year. A million mobile phones
contain approximately 15 to 16 tonnes copper, 340 to 350 kilograms silver and 24 to 34 kilograms
gold. Most of these materials are non-renewable, so with proper recycling, the cost and energy of
mining and extracting raw material is reduced significantly.

Reduce Landfills: Reusing old devices prevents e-waste from ending up in landfills. In 2016, 44.7
metric tonnes of e-waste were generated worldwide and only 20% of this figure was recycled. The
remaining e-waste was disposed of in landfills.

Electrical devices will predictably continue to surge on the global scale and microprocessors will be
used increasingly in daily objects. As per the statistics mention earlier, the volume of WEEE will
grow more rapidly each year and is believed that it will be the most critical waste disposal issue of
this this century.

There needs to be more awareness regarding this issue since most people are not properly informed of
the potential negative impact of the rapidly escalating use of computers, televisions, and mobile
phones. These products pose health risks due to the hazardous materials they contain. These materials
are released when these products are disposed of in landfills or incinerated. The environment is
jeopardized if electronic products are improperly disposed. The environment’s exposure to toxins is
rises as more e-Waste is thrown into landfills eventually leading to higher risks of cancer and
neurological disorders.
People are more inclined to behave responsibly towards the environment if they are taught about how
to recycle, reuse and properly dispose electronics. An example of a remarkable initiative was led by
GU-Q and QF-HSSE. The previous parties launched an electronic waste drive to tackle the e-Waste
issue and ensure these products a sustainable disposal which is located in the GU-Q basement Staff
Car Park. However, electronic waste is a global problem which requires a comprehensive global
solution.

Previous solution:

On a much larger scale, the disposal of e-waste has proven to be significantly difficult, not only
because of the extensive amounts of waste present, but also due to the current practices used to
eliminate it. In addition, at a nationwide level, the ability to remain practical by making sure that,
while the wastes are being taken care of properly, the various sectors that are financially dependent in
the early processes of the disposal are making a profit.

In an article that discussed e-waste management in India, the author highlights that a large percentage
of e-waste has been taken care of informally – either by private businesses or local scrap dealers – in
which it may have been possible that the waste had just been sold and passed on or disposed of
carelessly with the use of harmful chemicals. However, because this particular sector is financially
dependent on the disposal of e-waste, the country cannot simply exclude them from the process. In
this article, the “Stepped Recycling” method has been proposed and aims to stay within each
recycling sector’s allocated budget and its capacity to accommodate any amount of waste. It proposes
to start off by collecting wastes from the informal recycling sectors, according to their capabilities,
and using cheap methods in order to process the e-waste as shreds as these are easier to transport. In
order to provide the informal sectors with profit, the wastes would then be sold per kilogram to larger
enterprises, who would have the means to carry out the recycling process in a proper and less-
hazardous manner. The advantage of this sequence ensures that there is a constant supply of
employment for the unorganized sector. Because this gives a chance to many private businesses, there
is less government control over such initiatives. This is beneficial as it reduces the dependency on the
government to allocate funds and also reduces a possible re-allocation of funds, in any case the
government is in need of it.

In addition, many articles showed that Qatar emphasized on the disposal of e-waste. In 2010 Qatar
telecom (Qtel) (now known as Ooredoo) released the first program that was dedicated to e-waste
recycling. The program was to place ‘drop boxes’ in all Qtel shops throughout the country to collect
e-waste. The e-waste that was collected was placed in a 20-foot container that was shipped to
Singapore (special facility for recycling e-waste). Qatar continued the effort to create and maintain a
safe environment in 2019 by drafting a bill regarding “the treatment & recycling of e-waste”,
approved by the prime minister during a meeting of the council of ministers. A part of the draft bill is
that the minister of municipality and environment regulate the recycling and disposal of e-waste.
Many similar projects have been launched in Qatar that support the recycling of e-waste , such as
Georgetown university in Qatar & Qatar foundation e-waste drop off boxes. AL HAYA is another
company that is an approved e-waste collector in Qatar. Unfortunately, an official e-waste recycling
site has not yet been established in the state of Qatar, however, there have been efforts made towards
the disposal of e-waste by Al Haya. The process of recycling consists of breaking down e-waste into
materials that can be recycled in Qatar and parts that cannot be recycled in Qatar. These non-
recyclable parts are then shipped to a special facility in Singapore. From this we can gather that Qatar
needs more effective solutions for the disposal of e-waste as adding onto the waste generated in other
countries has many ethical and sustainability issues.
Scope: 

The scope of our project is within Education City, Qatar foundation. We tend to target both the
students who come to attend university and the general public who come to use EC’s resources i.e.
Recreation Center, Oxygen Park etc. The scope could possibly be minimised to only include TAMUQ
if the team lacks time or resources. Further changes to the scope will be made after conducting a
survey and interviews. 

Needs Analysis: 

1. Solution should be accessible i.e. feature multiple languages which are commonly spoken by
people in EC Eg: English, Urdu, Arabic, Hindi

2. Solution must be deployed in an area that is easily accessible to all people , high traffic areas
e.g.: student centre. 

3. Solution must be  accessible by people with disabilities eg: feature braille options or audio
options. 

Design Constraints:
1. Design must be limited to something which can be implemented within QF Education City
(EC). It needs to be easily deployable in the partner universities that exist within EC. This
means that our solution must follow any campus rules these institutions might have.
2. Our solution will deal with people from different demographics, who belong to different
ethnicities. QF housing currently accommodates residents from over 40 countries. Our design
must:
- Educate people what e-waste is
- Communicate effectively how our solution works
3. As this is a class project, we don’t have a capital or funding. Hence, our solution must be cost
efficient and limited to resources that are easily available. TAMUQ provides resources such
as 3-D printers that will allow us to build a prototype of our model and help us better evaluate
the large scale needs and costs of our solution as well as any anomalies or issues that may
arise.

REFERENCES:
https://www.sustainability.vic.gov.au/Campaigns/eWaste/Why-recycle-ewaste
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3908467/
https://www.iberdrola.com/environment/what-is-e-waste
https://gulfnews.com/world/gulf/qatar/qatar-drafts-law-on-electronic-waste-1.641398
https://m.gulf-times.com/story/633601/QF-s-e-waste-recycling-to-be-annual-initiative
https://www.qatar.georgetown.edu/campus-life/services/sustainability-gu-q/e-waste-gu-q/

https://www.hindawi.com/journals/ecri/2011/474230/

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/330337491_Disposal_of_E-
Waste_Case_Study_University_of_Bamenda

Stepped recycling: the solution for e-waste management and sustainable manufacturing in India by
Nisshant Shirodkar