By Dr. Tim Sandle
February 22, 2025
DIGITAL JOURNAL
Innovations in solar energy. Image by © Tim Sandle (Barbican, London).
Scientists have called on robots to be repurposed rather than recycled. This measure is to combat the rising scale of e-waste. Instead, the robotics industry should be creating robots that could be reprogrammed and repurposed for other tasks once their life span is completed, researchers from the University of Bristol have advised.
It is estimated that 80 percent of a robot’s environmental impact is decided during its initial design phase, experts argue it is essential that researchers, designers and manufacturers understand the limitations of recycling an electronic product at the end of its life.
To lower environmental pollution, the development process needs to consider the alternate options to create products that can be reused or more effectively recycled. Through this, the industry can edge towards a more sustainable lifecycle.
In most nations, robots and robotic systems are not classed as electronic waste. This needs to change and it is likely that, in the future, legislation will require robots to be recycled and reused. With this classification will come additional scrutiny of the robotics industry and the way it designs and plans end-of-life for electronic robotic products.
As with other electronic products, there are and will be a variety of options for what to do with a robot when it reaches the end of its primary life. Currently, many businesses, research centres and universities ‘hibernate’ their robotic electronic waste — where e-waste is stored for a period without being used – or it is simply discarded using conventional municipal waste collection systems.
The concept of repurposing, compared to reuse, refers to how robotic systems can be fully reprogrammed and integrated with new hardware. This results in a product which is still a robot, but one with a different utility to the original.
Helen McGloin from Bristol’s School of Engineering Mathematics and Technology explains further: “Regardless of being in industry, academia, or the general public, we are all aware of the growing piles of e-waste produced around the globe.”
McGloin adds: “This research summarises the growth of electronics waste levels and the hazards to the planet and people this is causing. The Global e-waste monitor produced by the UN highlights in 2019 alone 54 million metric tons of e-waste were produced, and this is expected to rise to 75 million metric tons by 2030.”
Greater efficiency of design and economics comes from repurposing. Here McGloin outlines: “While recycling may seem like an easy option to tackle electronic waste, it is so often miss-managed that alternatives must be sought…[we] look to challenge all those in the robotics industry to think creatively and pre-emptively into designing for a circular economy.”
Her team have highlighted a variety of challenges to implementing repurposing in the robotics industry such as assessing economic and environmental viability, proving technical capability of repurposing robots, addressing attitudes towards the circular economy through use of incentives and legislation.
The researchers will next investigate consumer attitudes towards secondhand robots, industry attitudes towards e-waste, right to repair, repurposing and the circular economy as well as the processes to repurpose robots and barriers to a circular economy in the robotics industry.
The recommendations appear in the journal Towards Autonomous Robotic Systems, in a paper titled “Consulting an Oracle; Repurposing Robots for the Circular Economy.”
Innovations in solar energy. Image by © Tim Sandle (Barbican, London).
Scientists have called on robots to be repurposed rather than recycled. This measure is to combat the rising scale of e-waste. Instead, the robotics industry should be creating robots that could be reprogrammed and repurposed for other tasks once their life span is completed, researchers from the University of Bristol have advised.
It is estimated that 80 percent of a robot’s environmental impact is decided during its initial design phase, experts argue it is essential that researchers, designers and manufacturers understand the limitations of recycling an electronic product at the end of its life.
To lower environmental pollution, the development process needs to consider the alternate options to create products that can be reused or more effectively recycled. Through this, the industry can edge towards a more sustainable lifecycle.
In most nations, robots and robotic systems are not classed as electronic waste. This needs to change and it is likely that, in the future, legislation will require robots to be recycled and reused. With this classification will come additional scrutiny of the robotics industry and the way it designs and plans end-of-life for electronic robotic products.
As with other electronic products, there are and will be a variety of options for what to do with a robot when it reaches the end of its primary life. Currently, many businesses, research centres and universities ‘hibernate’ their robotic electronic waste — where e-waste is stored for a period without being used – or it is simply discarded using conventional municipal waste collection systems.
The concept of repurposing, compared to reuse, refers to how robotic systems can be fully reprogrammed and integrated with new hardware. This results in a product which is still a robot, but one with a different utility to the original.
Helen McGloin from Bristol’s School of Engineering Mathematics and Technology explains further: “Regardless of being in industry, academia, or the general public, we are all aware of the growing piles of e-waste produced around the globe.”
McGloin adds: “This research summarises the growth of electronics waste levels and the hazards to the planet and people this is causing. The Global e-waste monitor produced by the UN highlights in 2019 alone 54 million metric tons of e-waste were produced, and this is expected to rise to 75 million metric tons by 2030.”
Greater efficiency of design and economics comes from repurposing. Here McGloin outlines: “While recycling may seem like an easy option to tackle electronic waste, it is so often miss-managed that alternatives must be sought…[we] look to challenge all those in the robotics industry to think creatively and pre-emptively into designing for a circular economy.”
Her team have highlighted a variety of challenges to implementing repurposing in the robotics industry such as assessing economic and environmental viability, proving technical capability of repurposing robots, addressing attitudes towards the circular economy through use of incentives and legislation.
The researchers will next investigate consumer attitudes towards secondhand robots, industry attitudes towards e-waste, right to repair, repurposing and the circular economy as well as the processes to repurpose robots and barriers to a circular economy in the robotics industry.
The recommendations appear in the journal Towards Autonomous Robotic Systems, in a paper titled “Consulting an Oracle; Repurposing Robots for the Circular Economy.”
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