So my name is Jos and I’m working on research in circular economy and automotive sector. And I would like to know your point of view. If you accept I’m going to record our conversation, transcribe it and put the transcription with a pseudonym, not your real name, in a repository of text documents that will be used for the research. If you do this and you change your mind and no longer want to participate, get in touch with us and we will immediately remove your interview from the repository. I’m leaving your information sheet with contact information after the interview, so please tell me your name and that you accept.
Yes, my name is Andre Popowski and I accept the above conditions.
Thank you. Andre. So the first question, can you tell me a bit about your educational and professional background and interests?
Yes. So I am a PhD in biomedical engineering and I focus on printed electronics. Obviously, as everyone is here doing. But I work on biomedical variables. I work with several companies as well, and in several research and development projects.
And what is your area of expertise?
Mainly it’s the biomedical sensors printed both chemical. So that’s that’s the main focus, but also like electrophysiological, like ECG, EEG and so on.
The theme of this conference is the future of electronics Reshaped. What does the idea of reshaping electronics for the future mean to you?
Uh, actually, I’m having a talk later on today and thought about it a bit that what most of the printed electronics developers try to do, they try to emulate the like typical rigid, uh, 20th century electronics with printing. So I see this this conference name very apt as we can really develop new forms of electronics. And with wearables, with biomedical devices, it’s really important that we don’t don’t emulate the existing solutions but create new ones from the very beginning.
What do you think is the relationship between electronics and the sustainability?
I think the printing technologies are a great answer to that because first of all, they produce a lot less waste. So that’s the first step, right, to to reduce the the waste you’re producing. But also the more and more ways to have the the materials being recyclable or compostable. So that’s that’s a great opportunity for us to take.
Can you define circular economy in your own words. What is it.
For me, circular economy is when the waste is being reused so it’s not wasted anymore. Like we should strive to live out as less as possible and think about reusing the materials, reusing the energy and use renewable sources of energy. So a lot of people here focus on solar cells. That was a big spike at the beginning of of this century with the printed photovoltaics. But it’s getting somewhere from what I hear. So that’s great. Also.
Do you participate in a circular economy yourself in any aspects of your life?
Yeah. In like daily, daily things from like segregating the waste or thinking about my purchases, both personal and professional. So we try to minimize the amounts of wasted material, wasted energy reuse, what we can reuse. So like if we have like printing paste which is a polymer. Dissolved in some kind of organic solvent. So the solvent is hard to reuse. But, uh, but the filler material, like carbon or metal, it can be reused. And we’re trying to do so as much as is feasible.
Uh, do you think electronics can play a role in making the car industry more sustainable?
I’m not a car expert, but I think some of the like, electronic aspects can key into that. Uh, like I say, I have very little like view insight into into technologies used. But from what I’m seeing here and in recent years, the, the electronic parts are getting more attention from the automotive industry. So that should be great if, if they can manage to, to make them sustainable and reusable or at least like environmental friendly to like decompose and and do not leave as much waste as.
And do you think electronics can play a role in making the car industry more circular?
The what? What is being made more circular, for example.
Just in reuse and eliminating waste?
Yes, that’s that’s what I’m thinking, because most of the rigid electronics are very hard to reuse and recycle due to like high temperature processes and, uh, very, very strong bonding between like laminates and so on, but with use of, like organic, uh, bio compostable materials. The, the, the waste can be decomposed and then the valuable material can be extracted from that. So I think that’s, that’s the way for like quite some years in advance. But, but that’s, that’s a good direction.