Collect e-Waste in Your Area for a Chance at a Million-Dollar Scholarship!
ERA offers awards to students who gather old phones, laptops, and more. The grand prize is $1M, but there are many smaller prizes too!
Looking for an Earth-friendly way to fund your studies — a way that's a little outside-the-box? The Electronics Recycling Association (ERA) offers a scholarship contest for students! All you need to do is collect e-waste in your area. Here's the deets:
Who's eligible to take part?
This contest is open to any full- or part-time student in Canada — international students included! If you're participating outside ERA's main operating areas, listed below, you'll have some adjusted requirements, but the basic ideas are the same.
ERA's main operating areas:
- Vancouver
- Calgary
- Edmonton
- Saskatoon
- Winnipeg
- Toronto
- Montréal
E-waste collection
Come up with a marketing plan and start collecting e-waste in your area. You'll be responsible for every detail, from planning to execution! ERA is looking for creative ideas to reach local businesses and community members.
Once you've got all the e-waste collected, the ERA team will evaluate each student's performance and choose a scholarship winner!
Collecting items
Wondering how you'll collect items from your community? It's easy!
- Use the ERA app, or a paper form, and create a shipping label with your unique ID attached
- ERA will pick up approved items for no charge! (There's a fee for non-approved items, but they will still count towards your total items collected.)
- Organize corporate pickups: ERA will pick up 10 or more computers from any company in Canada, and securely wipe the hard drives before donating the devices to one of 500+ charities
- Set up a community collection event and get your neighbours to bring their unneeded computers and electronic devices
Remember, the more devices you collect, the better your odds of being selected as the grand prize winner! Think outside the box to collect as many devices as you can. You'll help your neighbours, your environment, and yourself!
What items are accepted?
You can check out the full list of items here, but the basics are simple. We're looking for things like:
- phones
- servers
- laptops
- networking equipment
- game consoles
- and so on..
Unfortunately, household and personal electronics, including TVs, are not accepted! You can reach out any time for guidance if you're not sure what's acceptable.
How is the winner decided?
The ERA team will assess each participant in a few related areas:
- Quantity of equipment collected
- Quality of equipment collected
- Amount of exposure your collection event received on- and offline
You can tag ERA on social media using #ERAScholarship so we can check out what you're up to! Be sure to keep track of your marketing efforts so you can share the details in a post-collection report.
Please be aware that if you enter, ERA will own the rights to all marketing material submitted and can use these marketing materials as they wish. This includes any social media accounts you create for the 2023 ERA scholarship competition! You'll have to turn over the passwords at the end if you've created new accounts for this contest.
How do I receive the $1,000,000 prize?
The grand prize is $1,000,000, which will go to a student who collects one million laptops and smartphones suitable for donation! This is a tall order, but if you're clever and determined, maybe you can find a way!
Remember, there's also a $100,000 prize for a student who collects 100,000 devices! So keep at it, all the way to the deadline!
Even if no one reaches the $1,000,000 or $100,000 levels this year, there's still a $10,000 prize, plus a MacBook Pro, for the top student, and many other cash and laptop prizes for other participants.
When is the deadline to collect items?
You have until September 1, 2023 to collect devices for ERA! Winners will be announced on ERA social media around October.
You'll find more info on the ERA FAQ page, so if you have questions, start there. We can't wait to see what clever, creative ways you can come up with to collect e-waste from your area! Good luck!
Check out ERA's $1,000,000 scholarship contest