Hasta La Ideas

This week British Formula E team Envision Racing unveiled the Recover-E, a driveable Formula E car made entirely out of electronic waste. “Annual e-waste production is on track to reach a staggering 75 million tonnes by 2031, with the UK generating the second largest amount of e-waste as a country in 2022,” the team writes. “Items thrown away include disposable vapes, mobile phones, laptops, MP3 players, plug and batteries themselves. The growing phenomenon of single-use vapes means 1.3 million of them are thrown away every week in the UK.”

“To highlight this urgent issue, Envision Racing partnered with British artist and designer Liam Hopkins to design and build the car entirely of donated electronic products by the UK tech business, Music Magpie and school children. Through this campaign, the team wants to increase awareness of the human impact of e-waste and the need to reuse and recycle old electrical products.”

“Hopkins said, ‘Unfortunately today we choose to discard and replace electronics instead of repairing and recycling them leading to a global e-waste crisis. Through design and creativity, we want to show the issue of e-waste and its potential to accelerate the creation of a circular economy.'”

The Recover-E was unveiled at London’s ExCel exhibition hall in advance of the London e-prix, the final race of the Formula E season. Here’s a video look at the car:

“If the millions upon millions of Lithium batteries that are found in vapes and other products are recycled, it will dramatically reduce both the need for rare earth mineral mining and the large energy needed to create the batteries from scratch,” said Sylvain Filippi, Envision Racing’s Managing Director and CTO. “We want to increase awareness of e-waste and help build a ‘circular economy’ where electrical products are reused or recycled, not thrown away.”