The 2022 Hackaday Prize is focused on taking care of the planet. The theme of our second challenge round, “Reduce, Recycle, Revamp” is all about tailoring your projects to make use of existing resources and keeping material out of the landfill rather than contributing to it. Our judges have scrutinized the entries and handed me the sealed envelope. All of these ten projects will receive $500 right now and are eligible for the Grand Prize of $50,000, to be announced in November.
We were looking for two broad types of recycling projects in this round, either projects that incorporate a significant recycled component in their build, or projects that facilitate recycling themselves, and frankly we got a good mix of both!
On the first front, we saw projects that recycled plastic bottles, LCD screens, and the inevitable acrylic off-cuts that result when laser cutting. The X-PC even recycles most of the guts of laptop computers by creating a frame for mounting them as standalone desktops, and the ABN6502 uses scrounged up ICs to make a microcomputer. Skateboard decks made of recycled plastic? We’ll have to test them out, but it’s a cool idea and a great project.
In the machines-for-recycling category, we saw new progress on a neat project, the Plastic Scanner, which aims to build a device that can tell one type of recyclable plastic from another. And apparently the plastic that our 3D printers use is grinding a lot of peoples’ environmental gears, because we had filament re-extruders, filament recyclers, and even a Trash Printer that takes in scrap plastic and directly extrudes it into shape.
You can check out all the finalists in detail, listed in no particular order below. And if you’ve got a project that aims to keep devices out of the landfills by repairing them rather than recycling them, make sure to enter it in the Hack It Back challenge, going on right now.
Our congratulations to all of the finalists!
Ten Finalists from Reuse, Recycle, Revamp
IANAHaDJ (I am not a Hackaday judge)
But I lean more in favor of the e-waste projects (LCD screens, reused ICs, etc.) Than remelting plastic entries.
B^)
Yah, e-waste is a huge problem because they’ve put a lot of advertising into telling the public it’s waste, should promote as e-reusables, not instant trash the moment it looks a little tired or has a small scratch (Ewww, who would even want that now Becky.) .. in fact the whole triple R recycling message recently seems to de-emphasise the first r, ignore the second and go straight for the not energy free recycle mode. turning it into r_R not RRr.
Rrrrright you be matey!
Yes. There are ads here about your “obsolete electronics” and speakers appear prominent. Some may burn out, but generally speakers are discarded when people want something smaller.
It’s subjective, but I get the feeling that electronics isn’t showing up as much at garage sales and rummage sales. Which suggests people are seeing the propaganda and disposing of it “properly” by sending to recycling.
And nobody explains just what happens with that ewaste. I don’t see stores popping up to sell it.
About ten years ago, someone suggested that it’s all deliberate, get the stuff off the used market, so new stuff can be sold.
Hasn’t it just shifted from “garage sales” to Craigslist and the like?
The Germans version of it is packed to the rim with cheap/free electronics and stuff like that.
Oooh, what’s that? I need more free junk in our basement! (Or I could use it _the other way_…)
American free stuff craigslist board isn’t really useful.
The odds are very good you will just bring a scammer to your house, there looking for something to steal.
We want to use a board that has filtered for interested people (but those aren’t regional), not the big one where tweaks are always looking for an angle. Even then the smart move is not at your house. If you have to haul it, then why not just dump it at some charity collection spot?
To get rid of something heavy in California, the best bet is to put it on the curb with a price tag. Someone will take it and run. If the sign says ‘free’ they will ignore it.
I’d go one step further up the chain and vote for more effort (and more *coordinated* effort) in directly re-purposing entire devices (phones, tablets, etc.) or at least *enabling* it by a concerted effort to root them, document & simplify the process / tools, and standardise on certan common systems.
Projects like OpenWRT are a good example of this, but we need so much more – the amount of potential use in the average discarded smartphone is incredible, but the tightly locked-down nature of them makes a lot great stuff nigh on impossible.
Thank you so much for the support! Much appreciated!
A little mislink: The first link to my project points to the wrong project. Correct in the final list though. :)
Repair should be another one of the Rs. If you can fix something, you don’t have to revamp or recycle it.
The ABN6502 goes to the wrong place, FYI. Cool stuff, thanks for running the contest!
Thanks, fixed.
Thanks a bunch! I just arrived in Sri Lanka during the crazy economic crisis and government revolution, for our unconference http://www.dinacon.org and this $500 will go a long way towards mkre hacking! Thanks!!