For this source mapping assignment, I ended up going with disassembling an old GE clock radio that’s been in my family probably since my parents were young.  I couldn’t find exactly the date of manufacture (despite having the date code: does 3536K mean anything to anyone?), but essentially it is old and has reached the last leg of its life.  Instead of tossing it into the landfill, I decided to give it a last hurrah with a contribution to science - or at least to Future Craft, with a dissection of its parts.  If I had time, I would’ve dissected another type of clock to see if technology changes affect the source map of the product, but given the timing, one casualty is enough for a night.

You can see the source map details on the website by clicking the image below, to get an idea of the product’s embodied energy and how far its parts had to travel (based on my assumptions).

The making of the map took quite a bit of effort, though.  I found the process of dissection and identification of materials/parts to be somewhat tricky, not to mention risky:

The initial screws and parts removal was easy, but then once the back came off…where to go next?  I had never tackled electronics beyond theoretical circuit diagramming in high school physics, so seeing 3+ circuit boards with interconnecting wires and colored nubs somewhat intimidated me.

Nevertheless, I persevered, pried, unscrewed, pulled, and generally made it so that the clock would probably not go back together again (at least not without a fight).

In this process, I started looking up information about the make up of digital clocks, which threw me into the universe of printed circuit boards (PCBs), boolean logic, and more.  You can see the links to learn more for yourself, but in my research I did find the model number and information for the Toshiba LED display.  (Or…maybe that’s just me.)

In the end, I counted at least 27 distinct parts that I dissected, although there are probably more if I chose to break down the object even further.  When it came to the source mapping, I was in a bit of a conundrum: do I cite the assembled part (aka circuit board), or do I name every single material within that part (aka gold and copper pressed wiring, epoxy resin bread board, etc.)?  I eventually came up with the happy medium where I tried to discover the elemental materials of each component, and if I couldn’t, then I’d categorize it as one object and try to estimate an embodied energy for it (for example, the LED screen from Japan).

In the dissection of this poor clock, I realized the value of making products that are easily disassembled and then reassembled or recycled into something new.  One of the major components of the clock is polystyrene, which is a petroleum-based product that lasts virtually forever in a landfill.  Rare teak wood was used as a veneer on the plastic.  These things can’t be recycled.  There’s also gold on the circuit boards, which could be recycled but is an awful job of scraping.  I’m hoping that by now, manufacturers have gotten smarter than 30-40 years ago, but that remains to be seen.