While green energy solutions often rely on new technology, MIT students who took class STS.032 (Energy, Environment, and Society) in fall 2020 discovered that even many promising innovations share a downside — electronics waste (e-waste). “We’ve been using energy technologies that work well for our needs now, but we don’t think about what happens 30 years in the future,” says Jemma Schroder, a first-year student in the class who learned that waste from solar panels, for example, is on the rise. The International Renewable Energy Agency has projected that, given…
