Category: Project Updates

Posted on

Center for Innovation in Teaching and Learning Begins IGG Coordination

Starting in January 2019, the Center for Innovation in Teaching and Learning (CITL)  began coordination of the Illini Gadget Garage (IGG) project). CITL is a hub of innovation and hands-on support for those who want to discuss and work with higher education trends, models, projects, and resources. They hope to incorporate the IGG into their efforts to collaborate with campus units and other thought leaders to spark new ideas, strategies, and knowledge to shape 21st century teaching and learning. In Spring 2019, our workshop manager, Amanda Elzbieciak will continue to work with CITL to engage UI students in volunteering, coordinate workshops to learn skills relevant to device repair and maintenance, and explore new opportunities to incorporate the collaborative repair at the heart of the IGG project into unique experiential learning activities on campus.

The IGG was launched with funding from the UI Student Sustainability Committee (SSC) by the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center (ISTC) in collaboration with the School of Art + Design and the iSchool. We’re grateful to ISTC’s Sustainability Specialist Joy Scrogum, Professor William Bullock of Art + Design and Professor Martin Wolske of the iSchool for their efforts to establish the IGG project, as well as to the SSC and other corporate and individual sponsors for their support.

But most of all, we’re grateful to all the individuals who have worked with our staff and volunteers to troubleshoot and repair their devices, keeping them in working order and out of the waste stream! We’re looking forward to continuing to save resources through collaborative repair, fighting waste one device at a time! According to our records, as of December 2018, we’ve diverted an all-time total of 905.2 lbs. of materials from the waste stream through repair and recycling! Together we’ll make that statistic grow even more this year.

Check this web site site and our social media accounts for more information on upcoming events;  the first pop-up of the semester is Tuesday, Feb. 5th!

If you have questions about your devices, stop by one of our upcoming pop-ups at CITL’s Innovation Studio (172 Armory Building, 505 East Armory Avenue, in Champaign), or send us an email at illinigadgetgarage@gmail.com.

Collaborative repair at CITL

Posted on

Last Day of Service for Fall 2018: Nov. 9 Plus a Note About the Future

The last day of service for the Illini Gadget Garage for Fall 2018 will be November 9. Whether you need some guidance with troubleshooting, know that you’ll need a new part for your device, but aren’t sure which one or how to find out, or if you need access to tools and moral support to make a repair, get your appointments made or email your questions!

We’re entering the time of year when interest in appointments slows down due to students concentrating on final projects and the general distraction of impending holidays for everyone in the community. Given that, we thought it would be a good time to close down.

Also, an important transition is ahead of the Illini Gadget Garage. The Illinois Sustainable Technology Center (ISTC), which helped launch the project and has coordinated it for the last few years, will not continue its coordination after this semester, in order to focus resources on other projects. The possibility of the project being “adopted” by another unit on campus is being investigated, and hopefully that will mean the IGG will reopen again sometime in the near future. However, if another unit does not assume coordination, the project will sadly end.

On behalf of myself, Amanda Elzbieciak (our fabulous workshop manager), past staff and volunteers, and co-founders Martin Wolske and William Bullock, we have greatly appreciated the opportunity to assist the campus and surrounding community with collaborative repair. Earlier this week, I spoke about sustainable electronics and electronic product stewardship for a group of employees of one of ISTC’s clients. In that presentation, I asserted my belief (backed by the evidence of the myriad social and environmental impacts of electronics covered elsewhere in my talk) that because of all the natural and human resources invested in the manufacture of electronics, the most important thing you can do as an individual to reduce the negative impacts of the electronic devices is to keep devices that already exist in service for as long as possible. Having been able, through the Illini Gadget Garage project, to assist members of the UI and broader Champaign-Urbana area to realize that repair, rather than replacement, of devices with minor damage or performance issues is a feasible option regardless of income or tech savvy, has been a sincere honor. I truly hope that whatever becomes of this particular project, that spirit of repair and reuse continues to thrive and grow in our community.

So keep your fingers crossed that the project continues without me or ISTC. If you represent a campus unit that might be interested in the project, contact me (but keep in mind you will not be the first unit to express interest). And as always, if you represent a group or company interested in starting your own project focused on reuse and repair, don’t hesitate to reach out to me for assistance. That remains part of what I do as a member of ISTC’s Technical Assistance team. Watch this space and our social media for updates. Keep fixing, Illini! In the meantime, take some inspiration from the iFixit Repair Manifesto:

iFixit Repair manifesto, available at https://www.ifixit.com/Manifesto

Opinions are those of the author alone and mention of businesses or organizations are for information purposes only and should not be construed as an endorsement by ISTC or the University of Illinois.

Posted on

Updated Impact Stats and Fall 2018

Welcome back to campus, Illini–or just welcome to those of you who are just beginning your University of Illinois experience! And thanks to those of you from the broader Champaign-Urbana community who stopped to chat and learn about our project at the Taste of Champaign last weekend. It was great to hear positive comments on the idea of collaborative repair (i.e. we help you help yourself through “do-it-together” rather than “do-it-yourself” repair and we don’t just fix things for you–that’s what makes this an educational project for everyone involved!). We’ve already had some folks set up appointments for assistance, so kudos to everyone who has decided to try the “repair rather than replace” option we espouse.

A quick update on our impacts–see the recently revised infographic at https://drive.google.com/file/d/11XV_2jO3KNf7437oQ3IlXoc4HtIjGNZ_/view.

Our all time total for pounds of materials diverted through repair assistance and collections of special materials for recycling (e.g. batteries and CDs/DVDs and their cases) is 740.88 lbs!

How much is that, really? According to the web site “The Measure of Things” presented by Bluebulb Projects, that’s three-fourths as heavy as a grand piano, or about two-thirds as heavy as a polar or grizzly bear. See https://www.bluebulbprojects.com/MeasureOfThings/results.php?amt=740.88&comp=weight&unit=lbs&searchTerm=740.88+lbs.  Great job everyone! Let’s keep growing that number!

Maybe by the end of the semester, we can have a whole polar bear–we could call him the Repair Bear! 🙂 Or maybe instead we’ll just look at this cute, non-dangerous picture of a polar bear and reflect on how cool repair, reuse, and recycling makes us feel.

Image of polar bear floating on back in a pool of water, holding a black ball.
Photo by Cburnett, CC BY-SA 3.0

We’ll continue to operate by appointment in Fall 2018; send us an email, Facebook message or give us a call at 217-300-5629. You can also fill out our diagnostic form with some basic info on the device and issue you’re facing and one of our staff or volunteers will be in touch. We’ll also have pop-up repair clinics in various locations on campus and off (we’ll shoot for at least one on and one off each month) to help you fit troubleshooting and repair into your busy schedule. And we’re planning some educational workshops to help you learn relevant skills like soldering, how to maintain your device, the basics of how electronics work, etc. Again, keep your eye on this web site, our calendar, and Facebook for details!

Want to get involved? Send us an email to learn more about volunteer opportunities. No prior repair experience necessary, nor any particular academic background, just a desire to learn, to try new things, and help other people. Come join the Illini Gadget Crew and be part of the Fixing Illini! Can’t donate your time? Consider a small monetary donation to help support continued, free-to-the-public programming, like battery collections or pop-ups throughout the community. You can donate online at http://www.sustainelectronics.illinois.edu/SEIdonation.html. Thanks for your support!

Posted on

IGG Featured on Urbana Public Television’s “It’s All About U”

Thanks to Urbana Public Television (UPTV6) for visiting the Illini Gadget Garage recently and featuring us in the February 2018 edition of “It’s All About U,” a program that highlights events, services, and programs in the City of Urbana, IL. Host Natalie Kenny Marquez spoke to project coordinator and sustainability specialist from the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center (ISTC), Joy Scrogum, and IGG staff members Madeleine Wolske and Amanda Elzbieciak. If you’re just learning about our project, haven’t had a chance to visit our workshop, or would like some ideas for how to get involved, check out the video clip below. (Note the bit on the IGG starts at 8:59.)

Posted on

Gadget Garage Spring Update

This semester we will be focusing on pop-ups in and around the community to bring collaborative repair to you. Keep an eye on our social media pages, like Facebook and Twitter, to find out where we’ll be next. Due to limited staff and funding we have decided to scale back a bit and will not be holding open hours at our main location, but we are still here to assist you! We will be setting up appointments for those who cannot make it to pop-ups, or who need additional time to continue repairs started during pop-up events. Feel free to contact us via email or Facebook if you have any questions or would like to schedule an appointment with us. Also, if you like what we do, you can help support us by visiting http://wp.istc.illinois.edu/ilgadgetgarage/donate/donation-form/ .

Posted on

Thanks to HOBI International, Inc. for Continued Support!

We’d like to express our sincere gratitude to HOBI International, Inc. for their recent donation of $5000 to support our efforts to promote repair and extending the useful life of products here on the UIUC campus! HOBI has supported our efforts since the launch of the Illini Gadget Garage (IGG) project, providing a letter of support for our original proposal for a UI Student Sustainability Committee grant and making a previous $5000 donation.

HOBI international logo, with the letter HOBI and a lotus within the O. Below that are the words "Secure. Sustainable. Solutions."

HOBI International, Inc. is a leading mobile, IT and data center asset management provider with comprehensive and traceable solutions for device management, reverse logistics, data erasure, refurbishment and recycling, as well as compliance services. With locations in Arizona, Illinois and Texas, HOBI works with enterprises of all sizes nationwide. HOBI was founded by Cathy Hill and Craig Boswell and incorporated in the State of Illinois in 1992 as a privately held corporation. Its focus remains on the complete environmental disposition of post-consumption, manufacturing and mixed electronic surplus and scrap. The company holds R2, RIOS, ISO 14001:2004 and WBE certifications. You can learn more about them at https://hobi.com/about-hobi/.

Craig Boswell, HOBI President and Co-Founder, is a UI alum who has participated in several of the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center (ISTC)’s sustainable electronics efforts over the years. (ISTC coordinates the Illini Gadget Garage.) He served as a juror for the 2013 International Sustainable Electronics Competition, came to campus to present a guest lecture for the spring 2014 course ENG/TE 498: Sustainable Technology: Environmental and Social Impacts of Innovations, and was also a presenter during the 2012 ISTC Sustainability Seminar Series, speaking on design for recycling. You can view the archive of that seminar below. Craig has the unique experience of having been involved in designing electronics earlier in his career as an engineer for an electronics manufacturer. Now as someone who works in the recycling and asset management industry, he has been able to observe first-hand how design decisions impact the ability to repair or disassemble a product for material reclamation–typically by making all of that much more difficult because end-of-life management is not often considered in the design phase for electronic devices. He talks about that a little bit in the archived webinar below. It’s an important lesson which we hope UI industrial design and engineering students take to heart.

See our full list of sponsors at http://wp.istc.illinois.edu/ilgadgetgarage/donate/sponsors/. HOBI’s contributions have put it at the “Platinum” level of sponsorship.

If you or your organization would like to contribute to IGG’s efforts to promote repair as a viable alternative to immediate replacement of consumer goods on the UIUC campus and beyond, donations can be made at http://www.sustainelectronics.illinois.edu/SEIdonation.html. After entering an amount, you’ll be taken to the UI Foundation’s secure giving site to provide your personal and credit card information. Every little bit helps us pay hourly employees that coordinate student volunteers and day-to-day operations, cover expenses for our physical workshop and consumables, and provide special services like webinars, workshops and collection of batteries for recycling. Your donations also help us keep this educational project free for the campus and broader community. See “Our Impact” to check out what we’ve been able to accomplish so far. Your support will help our positive impact grow!

Note: Businesses mentioned above are for informational and acknowledgement purposes only, and should not be construed as endorsements by the Illini Gadget Garage, the University of Illinois, or units affiliated with this project.

Posted on

Thanks to iFixit for Continued Support!

Our sincere thanks to iFixit for their recent donation of $1000 to support our efforts to promote repair and extending the useful life of products here on the UIUC campus! iFixit has supported our efforts since the launch of the Illini Gadget Garage (IGG) project, providing a letter of support for our original proposal for a UI Student Sustainability Committee grant and providing the toolkits that you’ve used if you’ve come to the IGG for help with repairs or to participate in a class.

iFixit logo, featuring the company name below a stylized blue and white Philips screw head

iFixit is the self-proclaimed “Free repair guide for everything written by everyone.” Founders Kyle Wiens and Luke Soules got into repair back in 2003, as students at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, CA. When attempting to fix an old iBook, they found that no instruction manuals were available online. So they tinkered on their own with the tools and information they could find, and ultimately were successful. The experience inspired them to try other repairs, but again they found it difficult to find instructions, parts, and tools. So they began buying old computers on eBay for parts, and created a business out of selling parts and writing repair guides for the devices they worked on. Now iFixit is a wiki-based site geared toward helping people fix almost anything. Anyone can create a repair manual for a device, or edit existing manuals to improve them.

iFixit also collaborates with universities to provide technical writing experiences for students, including the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, via the Illini Gadget Garage and Sustainable Electronics Initiative at the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center. In the iFixit Technical Writing Project, students research common device problems and present software and repair solutions to guide others through the troubleshooting and repair process. To see guides completed or being worked on by UI students as part of this effort, see http://wp.istc.illinois.edu/ilgadgetgarage/ifixit-student-guides/.

See our full list of sponsors at http://wp.istc.illinois.edu/ilgadgetgarage/donate/sponsors/. This most recent contribution has brought iFixit up to the “Diamond” level of sponsorship. If you or your organization would like to contribute to IGG’s efforts to promote repair as a viable alternative to immediate replacement of consumer goods on the UIUC campus and beyond, donations can be made at http://www.sustainelectronics.illinois.edu/SEIdonation.html. After entering an amount, you’ll be taken to the UI Foundation’s secure giving site to provide your personal and credit card information. Every little bit helps us pay hourly employees that coordinate student volunteers and day-to-day operations, cover expenses for our physical workshop and consumables, and provide special services like webinars, workshops and collection of batteries for recycling. Your donations also help us keep this educational project free for the campus and broader community. See “Our Impact” to check out what we’ve been able to accomplish so far. Your support will help our positive impact grow!

Incidentally, if you’d like to know a little bit more about iFixit and the work they do, both Kyle and Luke are featured in the documentary Death by Design, which the IGG will be screening (for FREE) on Tuesday, August 22 at the Champaign Public Library–see http://illinois.edu/calendar/detail/2195/33277370 for further details. We hope to see you then!

logo for film "Death by Design" showing a soldering iron and smoke on a circuit board, with the film's name and tag line "The dirty secret of our digital addiction."

Note: Businesses mentioned above are for informational and acknowledgement purposes only, and should not be construed as endorsements by the Illini Gadget Garage, the University of Illinois, or units affiliated with this project.

Posted on

Battery Recycling Progress

The Illini Gadget Garage (IGG) began collecting single-use batteries for recycling at the end of 2016, purchasing collection containers and recycling services with funds donated for outreach projects of the Sustainable Electronics Initiative (SEI) at the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center (ISTC). (ISTC coordinates the Illini Gadget Garage project and the IGG is the main outreach effort of SEI. Got your acronym scorecard straight? Hurray!)

During the Spring 2017 semester, we filled and sent in 2 battery collection buckets via the Battery Solutions program. Battery Solutions sends us “confirmation of reclamation” letters that include statistics so we can keep track of the impact of this service. According to our confirmation of reclamation records, here’s a break down of the batteries we’ve helped keep out of landfill thus far:

Total weight of batteries recycled: 78 lbs.
Weight by chemistry: NiCad 1 lb.; NiMH 1 lb; Zinc Carbon/Alkaline 56 lbs.; Li-ion laptop/modem 15 lbs.; Alkaline/Zinc 4 lbs.; Lithium Primary 1 lb.

To everyone who has stopped by our workshop to drop off their batteries, great work! Every pound of material we can keep out of landfills and see processed for reclamation and potential reuse is a small victory, and small victories add up.

"Fight Waste, Illini!" written in white on a dark blue rectangular shape with curved corners

Beginning in Summer 2017, we’ll be accepting BOTH single-use batteries AND rechargeable batteries via the Call2Recycle All Battery Recycling Program. Convenience is key to recycling program success, so we’re pleased to be able to collect both types of batteries in a single bin. Acceptable materials include: Lithium Ion (Li-Ion), Small Sealed Lead Acid (SSLA/Pb), Nickel Cadmium (Ni-Cd), Nickel Metal Hydride (Ni-MH), Nickel Zinc (Ni-Zn), Lithium Primary, Alkaline, Carbon Zinc, Button and Coin cell batteries, and all cellphones are accepted regardless of size, make, model, or age. Wet cell batteries are not accepted.

So bring by your single-use OR rechargeable batteries to our Oak St. workshop for recycling, or give them to staff at any of our campus or community pop-up repair clinics. We’ll make sure they get into the collection bin.

And if you appreciate this and other services offered by the Illini Gadget Garage, please consider making a small donation to SEI Various Donors Fund by visiting our online donation form. Just enter the amount you wish to donate, and you’ll be taken to a secure UI Foundation form that already has the proper fund name indicated. You’ll receive a tax letter from the UI Foundation, and we’ll acknowledge your gift on our Sponsors page. Thanks for helping us help our community to keep materials out of landfill!

Call2Recycle branded image listing all types of acceptable materials. Rechargeable and single-use batteries weighing 11 lbs. or less each of the following types: Lithium Ion (Li-Ion), Small Sealed Lead Acid (SSLA/Pb), Nickel Cadmium (Ni-Cd), Nickel Metal Hydride (Ni-MH), Nickel Zinc (Ni-Zn), Lithium Primary, Alkaline, Carbon Zinc, Button and Coin cell batteries, and all cellphones are accepted regardless of size, make, model, or age. Wet cell batteries are not accepted.

 

Posted on

CD Recycling at the IGG

CDs in Jewel CasesNote: This post was written by Illini Gadget Garage staff member Madeleine Wolske.

The warm fronts have made some of our staffers go
into a frenzy of Spring cleaning! We’ve been organizing our inventory, recycling obsolete technology, and finding a lot of old CDs and jewel cases. Instead of throwing them away, we have bins at our location to recycle them.

Update your music collections at home, get rid of that soundtrack from “The Jimmy Neutron Movie” you’ve listened to once, and take your CDs and cases to the Illini Gadget Garage for easy recycling.