We’re so excited to announce that Dow is now the sponsor of the Team Sustainability Award!
We have updated the award to encompass two aspects of sustainability: team longevity and environmental consciousness. The revised award criteria celebrates how these two areas can work together to help teams have a long-term positive impact on both their community and the environment. You can check out the full award description and guidelines on the Awards based on Team Attributes webpage.
Check out this video where Paul Kline, FIRST ® volunteer and IT Director at Dow, discusses our long-term partnership, how these award updates align with FIRST ® Robotic Competition teams and Dow’s ambition, and what teams could consider doing.
We also worked with Dow to generate a list of resources to help teams get started as they think about how to incorporate environmental sustainability into their team:
INtersections- Explore Dow’s latest Progress Report to see how the Company is accelerating efforts to achieve its ambition and create a more sustainable, inclusive future.
Circular Movement Platform – Platform focused on education about Circular Economy with Dow as its founding partner. Includes several contents about the theme and educational activities for a wide range of audiences.
Circular Academy Course – Developed by Circular Movement, a free online and on-demand course on Circular Economy. Available in English, Spanish, and Portuguese, it includes a certificate of completion for all participants.
Battery Recycling - Experience shows that most FIRST Robotics Competition batteries lose their competitive edge after 1-2 seasons depending on how many matches the robot runs and how much current the robot draws. You may decide to keep some of the older batteries around for things like driver practice, outreach events, etc. but at some point, the batteries will need to be recycled.
Many battery stores will take back old batteries, and if they don’t, they typically can direct you to local recycling facilities that will take them.
Metal Recycling – Many teams use metal on their robots or for prototyping parts or various other things around the shop. After a season, teams may look to clean up their shop and get rid of materials. We recommend looking through all metal pieces to see what you may be able to use again and recycle pieces that are not reusable. Most places will pay you for your scrap metal but it’s important to sort your metal into different types as some materials (such as iron and steel) are more valuable than others.
Check out Earth 911 or similar websites to find out more information on recycling metal and find a location near you.
Carbon Footprint – have you ever stopped to think how much carbon emissions your team activities can generate? A great way to start thinking about those and how to reduce them is to calculate a carbon footprint. There are several free online tools such as this carbon footprint calculator that can help.
There are so many more opportunities to incorporate environmental sustainability into your team and we cannot wait to hear what amazing ideas our teams come up with!"
When folks asked for FIRST to focus more on Team Sustainability, and the Entrepreneurship Award changed to the Sustainability award, I’m not sure this is what they had in mind. I absolutely love that FIRST is focusing more on environmental sustainability and green engineering, but it’s weird to marry it into the same award as team sustainability.
At least in the states, it is mostly a solved problem. Lead acid batteries cannot be legally land filled as non hazardous waste. I.e. In your trash can. Recycling lead acid batteries that offers enough economic return that they are easily recycled. We give ours to the local Batteries Plus store. Probably anybody that sales lead acid batteries will take them.
I cant help but feel like there’s a connection between the increased focus on the environment and having the award sponsored by a company that produces chemicals
Actually not that surprising. Increasing the chemical manufacturers are being held responsible for the life cycle of their chemicals after they have been sold. Aside from being “good” corporate citizens, they have a economic incentives to do so.
I 100% agree here. This feels like a cheap way to bend the award towards a sponsor. FIRST is not an environmentally conscious program (aside from the renewable energy themes) so it strikes me as odd that they are throwing an award that recognized teams who fix a large challenge in FRC away to this.
Also this entire post reads like copy that was written by someone who has minimal experience with FRC overall.
Encouraging teams to reduce their impact on the environment is 100% possible but this is a rushed and half-baked way to do it.
The historical track record of Dow Chemical in terms of being “good corporate citizens” is, to put it lightly, appalling. The environmental destruction brought about by Dow Chemical and its subsidiaries over the company’s history has done incalculable, irreversible damage to the planet - perhaps more than any other single organization or company. I’m just a bit disappointed that FIRST is willing to play a small part in laundering the company’s environmental image by making their brand synonymous with an environmental sustainability award.
I’ve generally found it very difficult to recycle robot batteries; twice now I’ve started mentoring a team (one was in NorCal, one SoCal) and discovered the team was storing several dozen dead robot batteries because no one could figure out how to get rid of them. In SoCal our local recycling company would not take them, and offered no suggestions on how we could dispose of them. Home Depot’s battery recycling program (mainly geared toward power-tool batteries) would not take them. Several auto repair shops said they would take the batteries, if we paid them. It took a LOT of calling/driving around to find a place that wouldn’t charge us. Eventually we found a motorcycle repair shop that begrudgingly agreed to take them free of charge. In NorCal, I eventually gave up on the project. I think years later we did get rid of them, though I don’t remember what we did.
Batteries Plus is a great tip though, thanks for sharing!
Could be. I amAndyMark not specifically aware of Dow’s history. If you gave every sponsor of First a morality test, we would have a lot fewer sponsors. Just about any multi national corporation is going to have skeletons in thier closet. Not justifying bad behavior just observing reality. First alumni are going to be in a position to make these sort of decisions. Lets teach them to make good ones.
They make so so boat anchors. They have the weight, but not the flutes to dig into the bottom
That is surprising especially in Ca. Or maybe it is because of it is Ca. Recovering the lead and acid is very easy and has the value to make it worth while. Maybe it is the shipping cost.
MK batteries is located in CA. Might be worth giving them a call to see if they have recommendations of recycling options.
Dow is right up there with Dupont in how it manages its environmental impact. Their bread and butter is poisoning wildlife, when they’re not too busy poisoning unfortunate townsfolk. Hopefully students will make decisions on where to work based on a company’s actions and not its marketing - the sooner these companies get starved out, the sooner we can have a better alternative. Companies like Dow utterly dominate the chemicals market. You’re never going to get an ethical Defense company, but holy cow chemicals companies could at least make a marginal effort.
Yeah, the combination struck me as very odd. Even though they can both be described with the word “sustainability”, they’re not really related. I wouldn’t particularly expect teams that are good at having a team that’s well set up to continue thriving into the long-term future to also be extremely environmentally friendly, or vice versa. Expect a lot of judging conversations going “Well, Team A really stood out with their business plan and sponsor relations. But Team B is by far the most actively engaged team in recycling and environmentalism. So…?”
I’m very surprised that teams are not aware that auto stores like O’Reilly and AutoZone will recycle your batteries and give you a $10 store credit for each battery you bring in. They may require you to do no more than 5 batteries at a time, but it depends on the store. We have purchased a lot of our tools over the years this way.
Just about any multi national corporation is going to have skeletons in thier closet. Not justifying bad behavior just observing reality. First alumni are going to be in a position to make these sort of decisions. Lets teach them to make good ones.
