In the late 1990s, stacks of outdated computers leaned against the walls of a lab closet. David Park, then an undergraduate research assistant, had been told to clear them out. Some were only a few years old, yet already replaced by newer models. At the same time, he was tutoring public school students who lacked them in their classrooms. Teachers told him they needed more machines to build out their computer labs. Park saw the imbalance clearly: abundance in one setting, scarcity in another. He and his peers began repairing the discarded equipment and placing it in schools, churches and other community organizations.
Two decades later Park carried that memory with him as he joined the National League of Cities (NLC). One of his first tasks was to review a report by one of NLC’s graduate fellows on the impacts of the 2018 recycling import ban enacted by China. Cities across the country suddenly had to manage waste in new ways. For Park, the déjà vu was unmistakable. “That’s where I was reawakened, 20 years after the fact,” he recalled.
What happens to the drawer of phones and chargers we keep meaning to recycle? A generation ago, a computer might last seven years; today, a laptop or phone may be obsolete in two. The churn creates mountains of discarded devices.
David Park estimates that the Washington-Baltimore Combined Statistical Area produces about 200,000 tons of e-waste each year. Inside that waste is more than $200 million in recoverable precious metals, critical minerals, and other reusable materials. The problem is not a lack of material but a lack of systems to reclaim it. Much of it is burned at the city’s incinerator, buried in landfills across Maryland, or sent to salvagers who keep the best pieces and ship the rest overseas. Officially, this is called recycling. In practice, it passes the problem to another community.
“Look at what happens when it leaves our hands,” Park said. At the United Nations’ (UN) AI for Good Summit in Geneva, Switzerland in July, he heard how these discarded electronics often pass from broker to broker until they reach developing nations where they are burned in open pits to extract any metals of value. “The U.S. represents about 4% of the global population, yet it accounts for a much larger share of the world’s economic activity and waste,” he noted. The result is discarded technology piling up against a shortage of safe, sustainable systems to manage it.
Park’s fellowship at the SNF Agora Institute is built around a new idea: use technology itself to help solve the waste crisis it created. He is developing an open-source artificial intelligence tool that can collect research on recycling, analyze local conditions, and suggest practical steps for cities, universities, and neighborhoods. “The technical challenge, actually, I don’t think is that hard,” he said. “In terms of behaviors, that’s another story.” The project imagines a future where knowledge and data can be mobilized to build sustainable practice.
He has begun close to home, treating Johns Hopkins University as a testing ground. The university’s sustainability office has tracked e-waste for 15 years and watched the numbers climb. Move-out days leave behind piles of televisions, microwaves, and other electronics, many still usable. With better systems for cataloging and repair, those items could stay in circulation. Baltimore’s industrial past also offers potential. Park pointed to the city’s former plants and factories and asked, “It’s already here, right? Why are we sending it back to where it was made?”
Students and community members, Park believes, can anchor the work. He remembers how, in Philadelphia, volunteers set up clubs where young people learned to repair computers. GED programs and neighborhood groups joined in. What began as recycling also became civic education. He imagines the same in Baltimore: Johns Hopkins students working with libraries and high schools to start repair programs, younger students gaining technical skills, and faculty connecting research in engineering and materials science to real-world use. “We have no shortage of all this stuff,” Park said. “It’s just a matter of organizing in a way, learning while doing, but actually doing something productive at the end of the day.”
Change, in his telling, does not have to start with grand leaps. Small, deliberate steps such as separating plastics from metals, setting up simple repair pipelines, and teaching people to fix things again can begin to shift habits. “It’s now cheaper to buy a new toaster oven than to repair a broken one. The whole notion of fixing has gone away. How do we use that as a tool or platform to teach the next generation?”
At its heart, this vision mirrors the mission of SNF Agora: to bring research and public engagement together to strengthen democracy. Park frames his project as civic engagement at its most practical. “Learning while doing, and actually doing something about it,” he said, is the spirit that drives his work. “You can start with what’s in that waste electronics drawer you have at home, of all the batteries, old phones you have, the old cords you have, and then bring it to whatever, and then we could start figuring out collectively how to solve the problem.”
From the junk drawer in your kitchen to the global supply chain, e-waste connects us all. The way forward depends on communities learning, deciding, and acting together.
Join us for a community workshop with David Park, Director of Data and Business Analytics at the National League of Cities and SNF Agora Visiting Fellow. He will share his project, AI-Powered E-Waste Solutions for Post-Industrial Cities, and invite participants to imagine how AI can help cities tackle e-waste while fostering community development and civic engagement.
- Tuesday, September 9, 2025,
- 12:00 p.m.
- Lunch will be provided.
