Austrian student visualizes electronics made out of recyclable, dissolvable paper
She is a finalist in the James Dyson Award for international design.
Say what?
That’s exactly the phrase that came to mind when we came across this article about a college student in Austria who is looking to create electronics made out of recyclable, dissolvable paper. Her name is Franziska Kerber, and her invention named “Pape” — or Paper Electronics — earned global recognition when it was named a national winner of the 2024 James Dyson Awards.
Described as a cradle-to-cradle solution for small electronic devices, the invention features a user-friendly end-of-life system that helps address the global generation of about 50 million tons of e-waste every year. That’s the equivalent of 1,000 laptops being trashed every second.
PAPE is a product family primarily made from densely pressed paper fibers with a dissolvable and recyclable PCB board inside. This design transforms a smoke detector or WiFi router into a closed material cycle, making them both affordable and user-friendly. With significant advancements in sustainable PCB-board development by various institutes and start-ups, many incorporate a dissolution step in their recycling strategies. PAPE is innovating further by extending this dissolution process to the entire product, eliminating the need for mechanical deconstruction to recover the PCB board.
The James Dyson Award is an international design award that celebrates, encourages and inspires the next generation of design engineers. It’s open to current and recent design engineering students, and is run by the James Dyson Foundation, James Dyson’s charitable trust, as part of its mission to get young people excited about design engineering.
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