Natalia Milovantseva
University of California, Irvine Challenges of being digital: Understanding the ingredients of sustainable electronics consumption and waste management policies
A Russian native, Natalia earned her BA in International Studies summa cum laude with a minor in Psychology and Social Behavior and MA in Demographic and Social Analysis from UC, Irvine. Her award-winning thesis delved into relations between environmental legacies of post-Soviet industrial complex and early adult mortality. Natalia's dissertation research is aimed at better understanding factors that influence policy initiatives intended to encourage corporate engagement in the issues of sustainability, best practices of resources management, and environmentally responsible consumption choices. It has been supported by Research and Education in Green Materials pre-doctoral fellowship, Honorable Mention Public Impact fellowship, and in part by funds from NSF, the Center for Organizational Research, and the Newkirk Center for Science and Society. This fall Natalia is attending an international program in The Netherlands and Belgium designed to identify and tackle complexities of closing resource loops, after which she will participate in the World Resources Forum 2011 in Davos, Switzerland. After finishing her PhD program she wishes to continue research and teach industrial sustainability in Eastern Europe.
Challenges of being digital: Understanding the ingredients of sustainable electronics consumption and waste management policies
The lack of a comprehensive US national electronic waste (e-waste) policy and continued growth of electronics' production present increasing challenges for the environment. There are two main strategies for making our consumption of electronics more sustainable: transition to environmentally benign ('green') electronics and drastically improve materials recovery from e-waste. Both alternatives require insights into consumer participation, better estimates of the magnitude of e-waste, and understanding of organizational and management practices concerning reuse and recycling of obsolete electronics. In this context, I explore three issues. First, I quantify the backlog of obsolete TVs and cell phones stored by US households and estimate the volume of valuable and potentially toxic materials they contain. Second, I assess consumers' willingness to pay more for 'green' cell phones. Third, I explore how the private business sector could help foster markets for electronics reuse. I utilize various econometrics tools to analyze a unique dataset from a national survey of US households (n=3256) that includes behavioral, attitudinal, demographic, and socio-economic variables. Results will contribute to our understanding of environmental consumerism in the age of information technology.