Engineering Sustainability Store
The Engineering Sustainability Store will collect used project parts to minimize waste generated engineering projects. The store will provide a space and a mechanism for students to both give back course materials and rent or purchase course materials. We aim to help undergraduate engineering students to begin to think about reusing materials in their systems as an integral part of their design process, going from a consumer orientation to a recycling orientation.
The store targets the introductory-level ENES100 (Introduction to Engineering Design) class, which all engineering students are required to take. ENES100 is run by the UMD Keystone Program. A key component of the class is building an over-sand vehicle (OSV), which currently requires students to purchase new parts year after year. The Engineering Sustainability store will collect used parts from the OSVs at the end of the semester and make these parts available to future students.
Environmental Benefits
The project aims to reduce electronic waste from engineering student classes. According to a Time Magazine article entitled Electronic Waste Is Becoming a Global Environmental Problem, e-waste is the world’s fastest growing waste stream in the world.
The project has broad environmental benefits because all engineering undergraduate students take the course, totaling approximately 400 students every semester.
- Students will be encouraged through various means to use parts from the library, thereby reducing the quantity of new materials purchased.
- For materials that cannot be recycled, such as batteries, there will be battery collection bins located with the store. We have been in contact with employees from the Office of Environmental Affairs, who have described the process for adding new battery bins.
- Students usually receive the new materials by mail. The engineering store would reduce emissions from shipping and packaging waste.
Education and Outreach Opportunities
Parts can also be used for engineering students to engage with local elementary, middle, and high school students. Materials can be used by local students in their schools to encourage an interest in both engineering and sustainability. Similar education and outreach projects have been carried out at Clemson.
The store can also be expanded to other departments at the Clark School of Engineering or to other schools or units within the University of Maryland.
Impact on Student Experience
All students taking the course will be exposed to the idea of reusing materials in their designs.
This will introduce students to the environmental impact of their design choices as engineers, compared with the current approach of simply discarding e-waste.
ENES100 instructors will discuss with students the importance of reusing parts and the importance of taking into account the environmental impact of engineering design choices.
The project has diversity, equity, and inclusion implications, as students currently pay for all OSV components themselves. The OSV project has a maximum budget constraint of $400, not including shipping.
“I believe this is a good idea as from personal experience, both as a student and as a UTF, I have seen several OSV and ENES100-related parts lying around that end up being never used or thrown out by ENES100 students. Additionally, there are currently several OSV parts lying around in inventory in the ENES100 storage space. Having someone to manage the storage and supply of these parts such that they can be recycled and reused would be beneficial.”
“This kind of project would have been beneficial to me and my peers when taking ENES100 and other project-based engineering courses for two main reasons. Firstly, while the ENES100 Over Sand Vehicle (OSV) project required a lot of external research and team-specific determinations regarding the specific components, sensors, and materials we would use, we had to consistently balance it against our budget (which amounted to around $60-$70 per person). Using an engineering library to source previously used, working-condition parts may have better mitigated the tradeoff between cost and OSV performance. Secondly, after the project ended, my team was unsure of how to best dispose of our OSV. Some team members kept their own components that had gone into the OSV, but afterwards, there were many miscellaneous parts such as wheels, bolts, motors, and even versatile 3D printed attachments that were ultimately thrown out. A library could recycle these materials – many of which were popular in my class’s OSV designs – such that future students could use them at a discounted price.”
“[The] Clark School Engineering Component Library is a forward thinking project that pushes UMD students, staff, and facilities to look beyond the traditional engineering classroom. I believe this socially-beneficial, environmentally-sustainable project is both an excellent academic resource as well as an example of engineering ethics in action. I am excited to see UMD’s next generation of engineering leaders leverage this resource to achieve further academic excellence and social impact.”
