Introducing active disassembly, AKA gadgets that'll recycle themselves

Suffering guilt at your gadget gluttony? I know it well, which is why I was aflutter  last night at a Dana Centre demo of gadgets that can break into their component parts - a screen, keypad, battery and circuit board in the case of a phone - just by being exposed to heat or magnetism. To help me and my layman science understand, Habib Hussein from Ideas 3 gave me a thin piece of wire and asked me to bend it any shape I liked. 

Three seconds of his cigarette lighter later and it had unravelled back into its original straight shape.

A cool party trick, certainly, but just a small part of a relatively new tech dubbed active disassembly. In short, using memory metals and more complicated tech, it makes products a cinch to recycle at the end of their life: instead of painstakingly having to take stuff apart - which equals time and money - recycling plants can automate a lot of the process. Habib reckons the first real world products that'll actively disassemble are cars, with several manufactuers keen on the idea.

Nokia's been looking into it already - have a gander at its page over here. World Changing also has a good primer on active disassembly here.

Related links:
Dana Centre Wired Waste talk
Science Museum Dead Ringers exhibition

Comments

[beth]

still looking to recycle a bulky shredder

[Rachel]

Anything to make being green mainstream is a great move, still got to do something to make your 'average Joe' bother to recycle something rather than just chuck it in the bin though!

[Robert Fletcher]

Great article about activedisassembly. HOWEVER, I've seen this before. This Habib guy is not the guy. I've seen this work years ago on www.activedisassembly.com. This web site is amazing with loads of different applications. Impressive stuff.
Rob

[Jonathan]

To right mate! check out:
http://www.activedisassembly.com/animations/adsm_story.html

[Robert Fletcher]

Found this:
http://www.activedisassembly.com/10_videos.html