Biodegradable PCB and Bio-Plastic based Smart Watch

A smart watch made out of biodegradable PCB for the electronic systems and recycled bioplastic for watch case and strap.

The problem identified here is plastic pollution due to printed circuit board (PCB) and body of end-of-life electrical and electronic equipments (EEE). These PCBs, often known as waste PCB (WPCB), accounted for 44.7 million metric tons of e-waste in 2016 according to a report titled "Global e-waste monitor 2017: Quantities, flows, and resources".

The consequences are not just restricted to one particular community, but the entire globe. This problem is like any other plastic pollution problem, but often gets very little attention. Electronic gadgets have become ubiquitous in our lives. Every other household has some form of electrical equipment, be it a simple light bulb or more complex items such as a smartphone or a washing machine. When these items reach their end-of-life they often end up in wastelands. The situation is especially grave for wearable and smart electronics which often require an upgradation in a short period of time, leading to waste of previous versions. And its not just for end-of-life products.

Planned obsolescence, a technique by which an electronic item attains it's end-of-life faster than its supposed to be, is also an important contributor to electronic waste due to its impact on consumer behaviour. Due to planned obsolescence, many consumers have adapted a behaviour to upgrade their electronic items as soon as a new version is released, causing the older versions to end up in land fills earlier than it should have been.

While recycling solutions already exist for most of daily-use electronics, the process is labor intensive and cost ineffective. Countries like the United States regulate where and how e-waste gets recycled, but many goods still fill landfills instead. Of the $206 billion spent on consumer electronics in the U.S. in 2012, only 29% of the resulting e-waste generated was recycled. The rest were simply trashed.

If these electronic waste items are not properly handled, they can cause serious environmental and human hazards. Most of the PCBs have metals that if not disposed off in a safe manner can contaminate land and water resources.

Hence, the root of the problem is use of Plastic and its variants in the consumer electronics manufacturing pipeline.

Our approach to solve this problem is to establish a commercial entity that will put efforts to introduce biodegradable PCBs into the existing consumer electronics design and manufacturing pipeline, and with time make it a norm to have electronics products only with industry grade yet biodegradable PCBs that are easy to discard in an environmentally safe way after they attain their end-of-life or when they are discarded for newer versions.

We will begin with a simple and low-cost device :- a Smartwatch. 

Most consumers don't really care whether the electronic components used are biodegradable or not, hence our approach to allure people will be by providing them with a feature rich and aesthetically designed smart watch that serves their technological and fashion needs, yet is also environmentally safe due to the replacement of epoxy based PCBs with biodegradable banana fibers based PCB. Once we make our product well known to the customers and have a good amount of customer base, we'll replicate the core biodegradable electronic design across various other everyday electronic gadgets such as electric fans, lights, kettle etc. 

The prototype smartwatch will be powered with an arm cortex M0 processor coupled with a memory and power unit, soldered to a PCB made out of banana fibers. The smartwatch will be able to track various body parameters such as blood oxygen level, heartbeat rate and sleep level. We will offer an additional feature that's especially very useful in countries that have robust UPI infrastructure such as my own country India. The smartwatch will have an integrated camera to enable QR scanning and one-tap UPI payment. The watch strap will be made with bio plastic. The PCB will be made out of banana fibers as matrix and soy gluten as reinforcement materials.

Since our solution depends on availability of natural yet biodegradable resources such as banana fibers and soy gluten, and the skills of engineering, our industry will be able to provide a source of income to farmers and employment opportunities to many skilled and unskilled people.

India produces about 500 million tons of farm waste every year(source), a large amount of which are from banana plantations. Now recent research from well cited sources have proved the usability of some of these waste farm products in electronic gadget manufacturing, especially in the making of Printed Circuit Boards(PCBs), which is the core component of any gadget. But progress in commercialization of this research has been slow, which is where we are stepping in. Establishing a commercial entity that can turn this farm waste into something as useful as everyday electronic gadgets will not only get rid of accumulation of waste and resultant land and water pollution but also act as a source of income to these farmers which otherwise is not possible.

Such a commercial entity will also provide employment opportunities to the rising number of young graduates in the country. India is one of the countries with the largest youth population and therefore many are bound to remain unemployed due to insufficient job opportunities. Tapping into their potential to save environment is indeed a valuable prospect, which will both improve their individual lives as well as result in increased tax revenues that can be used to further develop the country.

We currently have two members in our team including myself.

Both of us have background in computer and electronics engineering. As for me, my university was situated in a village area surrounded by farmland. So I used to volunteer my engineering skills to modernize the farming techniques carried out by the farmers. In my third year of engineering, I invented a device that can track various farm parameters thorough a plethora of sensors and at the same time can help farmers earn a stream of income through the data gathered from their farmland using blockchain, hence in some way inducting then into the current data economy. Thus I'm always on the lookout for helping people from a technically average background gain some advantage in the technically sound world.

As for my teammate, he was involved with developing dispensary system of sanitary ware for his women colleagues so as to increase access to hygiene.

Thus both of us are determined to bring in changes to the lives of people through our technical skills. One factor that affects the lives of people is access to a good environment. And that's why we're taking this initiative to modernize existing technologies in such a way that they don't pose any threat to the nature, but at the same time people don't have to sacrifice access to devices that make their lives more easier.

Our biodegradable PCBs will be the first step towards such a future and we're determined to prove it using our first device, the nature compatible Smart Watch made out of biodegradable PCB and bioplastic outer components.

The idea we have right now is at a very early stage, was conceived just a month ago. We are yet to approach our potential customers to include their opinions into our device. 

As for the first iteration of the design of the device, we consulted our university professors with advanced engineering skills to evaluate the technical and financial feasibility of the device. The outcome was a green flag.

The way we are approaching the problem of plastic pollution is through tapping into human psychology and consumer behaviour.

Technologies such as smartphones were clearly disruptive in nature and it took a bit of time for humans to adapt to it as it was a paradigm shifting change. We too want to bring in such a humongous impact in the sustainable technologies space but at a faster rate. So how do we do that?

Well, one of the solutions is to utilize these already available disruptive technologies to bring in sustainable changes in a way that doesn't require current consumers to spend time adapting to paradigm shifting changes, and thereby helping make adoption of sustainable practices a piece of cake.

Let's take our plan as an example. As a strategy to integrate sustainable materials into the consumer electronics industry, we are starting off with a wearable device that's quite popular these days, a Smartwatch. In order to make it appealing to a consumer we'll be making very aesthetically designed and feature rich smartwatch because that's what an average customer would care about, and not whether the device is environmentally safe or not. 

But we as technology disruptors and advocates of sustainable engineering, will be making the watches out of materials such as bio-plastics and biodegradable PCBs. These watches will be looking similar to what existing watches made out of non-biodegradable plastics look like, thus our customers won't have to make sacrifices in their fashion and comfort choices to cater to environmental needs which will result in faster adoption of these devices. The result is that when these devices are discarded, due to either attainment of end-of-life or for newer version, they won't be harmful to the environment.

Of course, the rate at which our products will become popular also depends on factors such as our marketing strategy and the unique features that we offer. But assuming that we can fulfill these two criteria, it will create pressure on our competitors too to adopt sustainable materials and practices in their design and manufacturing pipeline. Thus we believe we can catalyze the adoption of sustainable engineering through our efforts of modernizing consumer electronic industry.

By the next year(2024), we aim to have a significant presence in the wearable electronic industry with our biodegradable PCB enabled Smart Watch. Our main goal will be to gather as much consumer base as possible as well as reach out to as many people as possible about our initiatives through social and commercial media.

We want people to know the paradigm shift we will be bringing into the consumer electronic industry by making devices that are easier to dispose off and thus are less harmful to the environment.

We are aiming for three impact goals :- 

1. Aid Government of India's efforts to reduce farm waste produced from banana plantations in the country.
2. Integrate biodegradable materials into the consumer electronics design and manufacturing pipeline.
3. Provide employment opportunities to fresh graduates.

Our core hardware technologies are :-

1. Biodegradable banana fiber based Printed Circuit Boards(PCBs) to make the Integrated Circuit (IC) of the Smart Watch.
2. Bioplastic based watch case and strap.
3. Plethora of sensors :- Gyroscope, Heat, Blood Oxygen meter, Infrared light, Camera. These sensors will be used to estimate various body parameters to help users adult their health routine. This is a common feature in most modern smart watches.
4. Processor - ARM Cortex M0 with integrated RAM

Our core software technologies are :-

1.  WearOS for our operating system.
2. Sensor fusion algorithm to estimate body parameters correctly.
3. QR code scanner for single tap Unified Payment Interface (UPI) payments.
4. Call accept/reject capability.
5. Variety of apps such as calculator, messaging etc.

We haven't launched our solution yet, but we expect to produce the prototype while bootstrapping with our personal funds and then with initial series of investor funds we will set up a manufacturing unit by year end that can serve over 1 lakh people.

These 1 lakh people will include our customers(urban shoppers), from whom the farmers who source their raw products to us will get benefitted.

Most of the Indian Smart Watch brands manufacture their watches from other countries like China. But we want to set up the manufacturing plant within the country so that we can set up a biodegradable design pipeline. 

Hence one of the barriers is beating the current competition and meet the supply demands by being an independent manufacturer. With this goal financial barriers come into place as it requires high capital investment in setting up a manufacturing plant.

Key Resources - 

1. People with engineering background.
2. Farmers who can supply raw materials such as banana fibers.
3. Land and monetary resources for setup and operations of a manufacturing plant.
4. Logistic services.
5. People with marketing and management background.
6. Website and cloud resources(eg AWS, Azure).

Key Activities -

1. Biodegradable material research.
2. Biodegradable printed circuit board manufacturing and supply service.
3. Everyday consumer electronics / wearable electronics manufacture and supply(the first product being a Smart Watch made out of BPCB(bio-degradable Printed Circuit Board).
4. Effective agricultural waste management for farm waste materials that aid in manufacturing of a BPCB.
5. Collaboration with bank networks to distribute part of revenue from sales to farmers.

Type of Intervention -

1. Manufacture of bio-degradable and environment safe consumer electronics.

Segments -

Beneficiaries

1. Human population in general.
2. Farmers
3. Engineering graduates

Customer

1. Middle class urban population

Partners + Key Stakeholders -

1. Government of India
2. Farmer network
3. Amazon
4. UPI (Unified Payment Interface) operators
5. Universities for academic research

Channels -

1. Amazon / Flipkart / Walmart
2. Company website
3. Physical shops

Value Proposition -

User Value Proposition

• Access to safe environment
• Utilization of farm leftovers as electronics
• Utilization of skills to build environmentally safe devices

Impact Measures

• Effective agricultural waste management.
• Secondary source of income to farmers.
• Employment to college graduates.

Customer Value Proposition

• Promote adoption of environmentally safe consumer electronics.

Cost Structure -

1. Salary to employees
2. Operational expenditure of manufacturing plant(for e.g. electricity)
3. Online platform and cloud resources maintenance costs.
4. Logistic services cost.
5. Marketing (such as advertisements on social media, television)

These expenditures will increase as we scale up the product from initial target of 1 lakh people to more than 10 lakh people.

Surplus -

1. Research on effective bio-degradable materials for consumer electronics.
2. Customer awareness campaigns.
3. Marketing.

Revenue -

1. Optional Donations - 5%
2. Sales from online websites such as Amazon, Walmart - 80%
3. Sales from physical shops - 15%

Revenue streams that we plan to bring in - 

1. Government grants for sustainable development initiatives.
2. Selling products on online websites such as Amazon.
3. Raising investment capital for manufacturing plant setup.
4. Government subsidy for manufacturing plant operations(in terms of electricity expenditure for example)