To tackle the e-waste problem, this casing for electronics dissolves in water

(CNN) — As the world’s appetite for computers, smartphones and other electronic devices grows ever bigger, the other side of the coin — e-waste — is raising alarms.

According to a UN report released last year, 62 million tons of e-waste was generated in 2022, enough to fill 1.5 million trucks that would circle the equator if lined up bumper to bumper. Most of the e-waste went to landfills or incineration, with potential negative consequences for the environment and human health, as e-waste can contain toxic substances such as mercury or lead.

There’s also a staggering economic loss, as $62 billion-worth of recoverable resources such as rare earth elements are lost in the process. Currently, just 1% of the world’s demand for these elements, which are essential to modern electronic devices, is met by e-waste recycling, the report says.

With e-waste rising five times faster than recycling rates, new solutions to the problem can’t come soon enough. Aquafade could be one — a fully water-soluble plastic that dissolves completely in about six hours when placed in a container of water. It could be used to encase electronics such as computers or keyboards and dissolved when the device is no longer wanted, making it easier to recycle or recover the most valuable components and reducing the amount of e-waste.

“For most electronic products, when they’re being recycled, it’s the disassembly that’s the real hassle, and really labor intensive,” says Samuel Wangsaputra, one of the inventors of Aquafade. “I think the brilliant bit with Aquafade is that a lot of that process is decentralized, and simply done at home.”

Unusual inspiration

The inspiration for Aquafade comes from an unlikely source: “One night I was doing the dishes, and I was looking at a dishwasher pod,” Wangsaputra says, adding he was intrigued by the water-soluble, transparent film that replaced traditional wrappers. “And I thought, this must be some form of polymer. But where does it go? So I tried one, just in a cup of water, and it fully disappeared.”

To find out more, Wangsaputra and his co-inventor Joon Sang Lee — with whom he founded UK-based startup Pentaform, a maker of low-cost and accessible computers, in 2019 — teamed up with Enrico Manfredi-Haylock and Meryem Lamari, two material scientists at Imperial College London.

“We found a material which is like a glue stick, called PVOH or polyvinyl alcohol. One of the criteria is it has to be food safe, if kids are licking the product, and it has to be fully biodegradable in the sewage system,” he adds.

Wangsaputra realized that PVOH could be the key to removing a bottleneck in e-waste recycling — transportation, which raises costs and creates carbon emissions. That’s in addition to the fact that most e-waste isn’t even recycled. Removing the plastic casing at home would be beneficial, he thought.

The idea has funding from the UK government and the four are working on the project at London’s Royal College of Arts, going through a series of iterations. “We are creating something that is water soluble, but also waterproof. The challenge was making a (waterproof) coating that is biodegradable, but also very resistant.”

This coating, also made of a plastic polymer, is only applied to the outer shell, making the product water resistant up to five meters for 30 minutes, which covers accidental spills or humid weather. “But once you take off just one screw from the product, that creates a leak. That’s when you submerge it in water. Five to six hours later, it will dilute, and what’s left is milky water and the most valuable parts of the product (the electronics),” says Wangsaputra. The milky water can simply be poured into a sink or toilet, and Wangsaputra says it will further decompose in the sewage system.

The first commercial application for Aquafade is likely to be as the casing for LED wristbands worn at concerts: “After just one use, thousands of people just throw them away. They are simple to build, and we’re in talks with one of the largest providers of these wristbands,” says Joon Sang Lee.

Next up is a mini PC made with an Aquafade shell that will be released on the Pentaform website. But the duo are thinking about applications beyond electronics: “It would work for any product that is injection molded, or any plastic that is a hard shell, so even luggage, car interiors, watches, sunglasses, even furniture” says Wangsaputra, hinting at the possibility of licensing Aquafade to third parties.

For now, Aquafade is double the cost of regular ABS plastic, which it would replace. But Wangsaputra says that that amounts to 5 to 10% of the overall cost of an electronic product, and that mass production will make it cheaper.

‘The devil is in the details’

Peter Edwards, emeritus professor of Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Oxford, who’s not involved with Aquafade, calls it “an interesting development,” but wonders whether the dissolved plastic will persist in the environment and ultimately end up as microplastic. The Aquafade team acknowledge that they have not yet fully investigated how the solution would biodegrade in the long term.

Michael Shaver, a professor of Polymer Science at the University of Manchester, who’s also not involved with Aquafade, shares some reservations about its sustainability, noting that there are questions around the mechanism, safety and rate of biodegradation, but adding that in waste water systems in the developed world, this is generally well controlled when it comes to PVOH, which is well known from dishwasher and laundry pods.

However, he adds, the impact of the waterproof coating on this degradation needs more clarity. “The devil is in the details here — electronics have high specifications for their plastics. Some need to be very good (electrical) insulators or they may need to be fire retardant,” he says. “And they certainly all need to have an exceptional weathering performance to ensure a long life — I can see this being the biggest technical hurdle.”

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