Unless you have been trapped in an underwater pyramid, you are aware that there is a new iPhone coming this week—the Apple iPhone 5—and waiting lists are now forming. It’s the usual technophoria of a new gadget to play with. Now, I hate to be the raspberry seed in the wisdom tooth here, but as everyone rushes to upgrade, we may be in for an influx of e-waste as old units get discarded in one way or another. (Also, it seems battery life is congruent with the upgrade cycle. Funny, that.) It’s not just the phones. Apple has also redesigned and replaced the power and data connector port (of course it has)—which means all our legacy cords, chargers, adapters, and other accessories won’t work with it. So...more e-waste. Fortunately, e-waste solutions are appearing. I have long used a service called GreenDisk to handle all my “technotrash”—old AOL disks, SCSI cables (remember those?), VHS tapes, audio cassettes, Handspring Visors, etc., etc. The EPA also offers advice on e-cycling. Now, via TriplePundit, a triumvirate of organizations—the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), InnoCentive, and EMC, a maker of network storage solutions—has selected the winner(s) of an e-waste challenge, “aimed at finding solutions for tracking shipments of used electronic components and subsystems and ensuring that they are disposed of responsibly.” The challenge:

“Using current processes and technologies, it is simply too difficult to measure the true destination of e-waste as it passes through the hands of downstream contractors who handle disposal and recycling.  This Challenge seeks ideas for a scalable system (may include processes, devices, etc.) that will allow EMC to follow e-waste to final destination.  EMC’s systems are large and complicated pieces of equipment made of sub-systems; this Challenge seeks a way to track individual parts and subsystems.”

They chose three solutions, each of which involved some sort of encoding of parts to track them—through RFID or other means—through the system. As part of the next step, EMC will synthesize the three solutions and seek some common denominator to precipitate out a single unique and effective solution.