Circular Electronics

Circular Electronics is one of the 25 multidisciplinary Challenge-Based Learning (CBL) projects launched as part of the MDCBL initiative, with the first edition running in 2025. In this project, students tackle the pressing issue of Waste from Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE), the fastest growing waste stream worldwide. In 2019 alone, an estimated 53.6 million metric tons of E-Waste were generated, a figure expected to rise to 74.7 million metric tons by 2030 if current trends continue.

Students work in teams to explore the complex material composition of WEEE, which includes valuable precious metals, polymers, and hazardous substances. With only 17.4% of E-Waste currently documented as properly recycled, the project challenges students to rethink how electronic products are designed, used, and disposed of, aiming to shift from a linear to a more circular economy. Throughout the project, they are encouraged to develop solutions that address technical, regulatory, and business-related barriers to achieving circularity in electronics.

The project is coordinated by Lorenzo Ceccarelli and involves several external stakeholders, including companies such as PreZero and Neways, as well as organizations like Engineers Without Borders. These partners provide real-world perspectives and contribute to shaping the challenges students work on.

My role within the Circular Electronics project is to support students specifically with materials-related challenges. Given the complexity of the materials involved in electronics, I help students understand material properties, recycling constraints, and potential innovations that can facilitate circular design and manufacturing.

To give your project a background in the portfolio page, just add the img tag to the front matter like so:

---
layout: page
title: project
description: a project with a background image
img: /assets/img/12.jpg
---

You can also put regular text between your rows of images, even citations (missing reference). Say you wanted to write a bit about your project before you posted the rest of the images. You describe how you toiled, sweated, bled for your project, and then… you reveal its glory in the next row of images.

The code is simple. Just wrap your images with <div class="col-sm"> and place them inside <div class="row"> (read more about the Bootstrap Grid system). To make images responsive, add img-fluid class to each; for rounded corners and shadows use rounded and z-depth-1 classes. Here’s the code for the last row of images above:

<div class="row justify-content-sm-center">
  <div class="col-sm-8 mt-3 mt-md-0">
    {% include figure.liquid path="assets/img/6.jpg" title="example image" class="img-fluid rounded z-depth-1" %}
  </div>
  <div class="col-sm-4 mt-3 mt-md-0">
    {% include figure.liquid path="assets/img/11.jpg" title="example image" class="img-fluid rounded z-depth-1" %}
  </div>
</div>