CFP: E-waste management in the IV Congress of CyberSociety 2009

IV Congress of CyberSociety 2009
12-29 November 2009
Online Congress

The Observatory for CyberSociety <http://www.cibersociedad.net/> and
CitiLab-Cornellà <http://www.citilab.eu/> organized the IV Congress of
CyberSociety, a Living Congress that is taking place in different phases,
and whose period of discussion of online communication will take place
between 12 and 29 November 2009.

The conference this year is structured around six broad themes, grouping
them in various working groups with specific themes:

- Education
- Politics
- Communication
- Science and Research
- Economy
- Culture

Here you can find a list with all the Working Groups of the Congress:

http://www.cibersociedad.net/congres2009/en/gts/

Communications or "papers" are at the core of the Congress. Therefore, they
must be framed and appeal directly to the issues presented by any of the
Working Groups. This year, it was included the possibility of communication
in different formats (text, audio, video or slide show).

The working languages of the Congress and the ones in which the organization
will accept submissions are: English, Catalan, Spanish, Galician and
Portuguese. The organization of the conference will provide an automatic
translation system for all web submissions.

===E-waste management Working Group===

The development of the CyberSociety and its intensive use of technology is
also associated with a huge production of electronic equipment: from
personal computers and mobile phones to the major data centers which
constitute the complex physical network of Internet, production and
consumption of electronic devices play a central role in the economy of the
Information Society.

E-waste is the general label given to all kinds of waste generated from
electrical and electronic equipment. With the exponential rise in the
production and consumption of such devices, the amount of e-waste generated
each year has become an issue which also grows bigger with the rapid spread
of the use technology in the different aspects of our everyday life.

There are different issues which call for attention regarding e-waste
management, along all stages of the electronic devices' production cycle,
from design and development, through consumption and use, up to recycling
and disposal. Regarding the topic of consumption, for example, a point to be
explored is the concept of "obsolescence" and the roles of mass media and
the industry of electronics in the construction of consumers' "need" to
constantly change their laptops, mobiles, cameras and other equipments.
Another issue is how to properly dispose e-waste, since it can not be
discarded alongside household garbage because of the large amount of toxic
substances present in these devices which can severely pollute the
environment. Also, electronic products contain huge amounts of applied
knowledge, and to simply throw them away is a loss of all this knowledge.

Furthermore, one of the still unresolved problems related to the egalitarian
dissemination of access to computers and the Internet among disadvantaged
groups, specially in developing countries, is the impossibility of many
people and associations to afford the prices of the devices. The high cost
of some of the equipment, services and appliances is still a key factor for
the existence of the "digital divide" which could also be addressed by the
use of supposedly obsolete technologies.

Thus it is clear that the issue of what to do with e-waste touches many
issues that need to be discussed and disseminated, from a technical point of
view of how to make the process more sustainable and cause as less impact as
possible to the environment, to the different strategies of appropriation,
re-signification and reuse of e-waste.

In this context, our proposal for this working group is to discuss the
different issues related to electronic waste, through reflection on data and
case studies about how communities, NGOs, companies and governments are
dealing with the problem, the different strategies and public policies on
the issue, and possible environmental and social solutions.

We encourage communications in video format (surveys, documentaries etc) and
text (articles, reports etc). We also plan to organize remote round-tables
using video-conference technology. If you are interested in participating,
please contact the coordinators of the WG.

The coordinators of this WG are part of the projects obsoletos.org from
Spain, lixoeletronico.org from Brazil and the MetaReciclagem network
http://rede.metareciclagem.org

===Requirements .===

http://www.cibersociedad.net/congres2009/en/estatic/bases-para-la-presentacion-de-comunicaciones/16

===Key dates===

Submission deadline: September 15, 2009
Online discussion period: 12-29 November 2009