Team:Tec-Monterrey/Eweek
E-week, an e-waste collection campaign.
Since our project focuses on e-waste and its correct disposal, from the beginning we knew that we wanted to organise an e-waste collection campaign. What we could have never predicted is all the support that our community showed us and all the things we learned while doing it.
For four days, we collected all types of electronic devices. From old computers and printers to cellphones and video game consoles. However, the best part of it was talking with all the people that approached us and telling them all about our project and giving them information on e-waste and its correct disposal.
Something that will stay with us forever is a special moment we had during our e-week. In our third day of the campaign, we were approached by a man who was part of an indigenous community from Oaxaca, one of the poorest states of Mexico. He asked us some question and was genuinely impressed when we told him we were collecting e-waste to recycle it. He told us that in Oaxaca everyone just threw it away and there were several rivers polluted with electronics, and he never imagined that they could be so damaging to the environment. We told him all the ways in which he can help to improve the situation back in Oaxaca, and encouraged him to share this information among his community. He left our stand very motivated and that just made it all worth it. After talking with him we realized the importance of what we were doing, but we also noticed that we needed to go even further and reach people from different backgrounds.
At the end of our e-week we were very happy with its outcome because, thanks to the involvement of our community, we managed to collect about 830 kg of e-waste, which we sent to CVR so that it could be correctly recycled. Also, CVR agreed to provided us with the shredded e-waste for our project, so the e-waste we collected is the same e-waste we will be using in the future to validate and test our process.
Brought to you by iGEM Tec-Monterrey 2016
