In the final stages of my MSc at Esade Business School in Barcelona, I enrolled in a program focused on promoting social justice that matches students with partner NGOs and social enterprises globally. As students, we were encouraged to trust the process and embrace whichever match we were given. Esade prepared us for every possible challenge: board disagreements about our presence, uncertainty about the direction of our projects or doubts about our impact. Yet, upon arriving at Kopernik, I quickly realized that many of these worst-case scenarios were unlikely. My assigned project at Kopernik was a micro-experiment called Bauhaus, which focuses on upcycling electronic waste (e-waste) into agri-tech solutions. Bauhaus is currently being assessed to join Kopernik's spin-off program called The Next CEO.
Currently in Indonesia, a mere 5% of e-waste is being formally collected and recycled, in comparison to the 22% globally, according to the United Nations Institute for Training and Research. But what happens to the other 95% of potentially hazardous waste? Either it is being disposed of as residual waste and left in landfills without proper treatment, or it is being used for the extraction of precious materials (e.g. copper and gold). In this last option, people usually burn the devices for the extraction, which might have serious health implications, and later trade or sell it through informal economies.