One day your new smartphone will slip from your hand to the sidewalk, and the shattered screen will need to be replaced — and then replaced again. The speaker will stop working. The processing speed will slow under the weight of 10,000 photos of your dog. Soon, you'll be headed to the store for an upgrade, like more than 1.5 billion others every single year.

The endless production and disposal of consumer electronics has an oversized impact on the environment, though. Duke civil and environmental engineers are working to make raw materials more sustainable and reimagining how we deal with harmful waste.