Tech start-up Pentaform has devised a potential solution to e-waste: making gadgets that dissolve in water and leave behind only their electronic components for recycling.
Pentaform's idea involves making both the housing of an electronic product and its circuit board from a type of biodegradable and fully water-soluble plastic that the company is calling Aquafade.
The product ? for instance, a computer or remote control ? is given a thin waterproof coating on the outside to protect it from moisture, but when its housing is opened and the whole thing is submerged in water, it completely dissolves in six to eight hours.
Aquafade is a water-soluble material intended for electronic devices
As the plastic starts to break down, the valuable electronic parts can be easily separated from the material by hand, and the remainder of the plastic-water mixture is tipped down a sink or toilet so it can finish decomposing in the sewage system. Pentaform co-founders Samuel Wangsaputra and Joon Sang Lee came up with Aquafade out of frustration with both e-waste and biodegradable plastics.
According to the duo, biodegradable plastics usually ends up in landfill rather than proper composting facilities and enters the environment as microplastics.
They are also critical of the carbon emissions generated from composting sites and waste transportation, which they think could be reduced.
With Aquafade, there is a shortcut to the best processing facility and no microplastics are left behind, they...