by MAURA KELLER
The e-waste stream in the U.S. and throughout the world is becoming larger each year.
The good news is, more businesses and consumers are participating and beginning to understand the importance of responsibly recycling e-waste. According to Kristina Picciotti, chief executive officer of Global Electronic Recycling (GER). At GER, they mainly provided e-waste recycling services to large corporations that had a robust sustainability plan in place. But now, more than ever before, they’re seeing small businesses and consumers participate in the voluntary recycling of their end-of-life electronics.
“Despite the growing efforts of corporations and consumers, there are still many challenges the e-waste industry faces globally. For example, the vast need for better plastic recycling, or more importantly, the reduction of the use of plastics altogether,” Picciotti said. Most electronics are housed in plastic, and although e-waste recyclers do everything they can to ensure that plastics are properly recycled by a reputable and reliable plastic downstream recycler, ultimately, there is more plastic manufactured than can feasibly be recycled in the world today.
Eoin Pigott is a business development associate at Wisetek, an IT asset disposition and e-waste recycling company that operates a zero percent landfill policy, meaning all of the devices that pass through Wisetek’s hands are responsibly recycled or repurposed. Wisetek works with a number of blue chip companies like Google, Facebook, FitBit and more.
“Generally speaking, the current status of the e-waste stream both in the U.S. and globally is not great. It’s estimated that there will be about 57.4 million tons of e-waste generated this year globally, with the U.S. contributing around 7 to 8 million tons of this alone,” Pigott said.
The COVID Effect
COVID has hugely impacted the e-waste stream, mainly because the sales of electronic devices and equipment dropped dramatically during the first three quarters of 2020 for obvious reasons. According to Pigott, it’s estimated that 5 million tons of e-waste was not produced during this time. However this was only a temporary slowing of the waste production as lockdowns eased and global economies restarted, the e-waste production drove on once again.
Picciotti said in 2020, COVID presented some unique challenges and opportunities for the e-waste recycling industry. With mandated quarantines throughout the U.S. in 2020, as well as illnesses from the virus, many e-waste recyclers were forced to close temporarily and for some, it meant permanent closure.
“Eventually, in 2020, the e-waste recycling industry was deemed an essential operation, and allowed to reopen. However, the supply of e-waste from corporations slowed down temporarily, due to the impact on the closures of those businesses,” Picciotti said. “Additionally, many large corporations furloughed and terminated positions in order to keep their profits high while the quarantines were in place.”
For Global Electronic Recycling Company, this meant building relationships with new people at the companies in order to keep inbound e-waste streams alive at the company’s plant.
“We also had to educate people in those corporations on what the recycling program entailed and the importance of continuing their recycling programs,” Picciotti said. “That effort meant we had to place more emphasis on education and business development, which ultimately was very positive overall.”
Global Electronic Recycling also saw an increase in demand for re-useable electronics that they can refurbish and remarket to consumers – things like laptops, processor chips, memory and various other electronics that have been difficult for consumers to purchase brand new because of the supply chain crisis and chip shortages.
“These items have become a bit more profitable for e-waste recyclers and for corporations that are recycling those items, since the beginning of the COVID pandemic,” Picciotti said.
Mark Kasper, chief operations officer at Clean Earth, said that as building leases come due, Clean Earth has seen more closeouts and decommission projects for offices as companies are opting for a more remote approach.
“A few of our top customers are moving out of offices and data centers and having employees work at home permanently,” Kasper said. “Our team is helping these customers transition by cleaning out the electronics in their buildings and offices and processing the electronic waste for proper recycling, reuse or data destruction.”
Residential drop-offs of household hazardous waste (HHW) were also lessened because of COVID-19. As Kasper pointed out, with certain counties easing restrictions now, we are seeing double to triple the volume in e-waste drop-offs at our collection events that Clean Earth co-hosts in communities with the local city or county.
“At our electronics facility in Allentown, Pennsylvania, we complete monthly HHW collection events. Hundreds of cars line up at 8 a.m.,” Kasper said. “People want to do the right thing and know they should not throw electronics in the regular trash. And during the pandemic, as e-waste piled up in their homes, residents had more time to research and educate themselves on its proper disposal. We have also noticed that, with cancellation of previous collection events, municipalities are doing a stronger job of marketing collection events that are being held again.”
A Concerted Effort
Across the U.S. there are efforts being made to rightly encourage e-waste recycling. Throughout the U.S., various states have adopted requirements for consumers, businesses and/or manufacturers to recycle their electronics, rather than sending them to landfills.
“There are 25 states currently in the U.S. that have e-waste laws in place, all of these are slightly different but most use an extended producer responsibility model, which basically means the manufacturers of everyday electronics in said state actually fund the devices’ recycling,” Pigott said. “Most of these states handle e-waste in terms of weight, so many are seeing a drop in the amount of e-waste that is recycled, but this is more so down to devices becoming smaller and lighter.”
For example, nearly everyone has a lightweight, flat screen TV now as opposed to a chunky tube TV. Some states are changing their e-waste laws, like Illinois, where they recently shifted from a weight-based collection target model in favor of “convenience-based” model. This requires manufacturers to fund collection sites according to the overall population density of an area.
“This is done in order to provide more overall access to recycling and not to worry about the volume of e-waste that is being received,” Pigott said.
As Picciotti explained, the requirements may include hefty fines and penalties for businesses that are not in compliance.
“The recycling requirements are different in each state, which, in my opinion makes it more difficult and more costly for businesses to manage. I believe the U.S. and the world needs better incentives for businesses to recycle their e-waste,” Picciotti said.
Many municipalities have educational literature and instructions on their websites for consumers to understand how to recycle, as well as the importance of e-waste recycling. But, in many states, it’s mainly up to consumers to take it upon themselves to take their electronics to a drop-off facility to recycle e-waste.
Overall, Picciotti feels it’s not a winning model. “Most Americans are so busy, they don’t take the time to collect their electronics and drive them to a facility. There’s little to no incentive nor personal consequence to the consumer to make the effort,” Picciotti said. “There are good citizens who recognize the importance of e-waste recycling, and those people are usually the ones who have been educated on the impact of landfilling electronics.”
If it were as easy as sorting paper from plastic in a household recycling bin, Picciotti thinks more people would gladly participate. “America can do better with the right resources, programs and education for the public as wells as a unified system for commercial e-waste recycling throughout the country,” she said.
In addition, as technology continues to grow and evolve, consumers replace their electronic devices for the “latest and greatest,” which definitely presents a real opportunity for e-waste recyclers, but not as much as one might think.
As Picciotti explained, one problem with the “latest and greatest” technology is that the electronics are rapidly evolving into devices that contain less and less precious metals, high-end components, base metals and resale value. An e-waste recycler typically operates and profits from these four main revenue streams:
•Resale – Electronics that still have a useful life in secondary markets such as eBay, Amazon Marketplace etc., after refurbishment. One person’s trash becomes another person’s treasure.
•Precious Metal Recovery – Circuit boards and other components contain tiny amounts of gold, silver, platinum and palladium. These precious metals, although small on a single device, add up over multiple devices and help drive revenues to e-waste recyclers for operations.
•Base Metal Recovery – Copper, lead, nickel, tin, aluminum and zinc. These base metals are recycled and then used to make new electronics or other goods for the world.
•Service Fees – When the electronic device has little or no value from the above revenue streams, it must charge the consumer or corporation for the recycling process.
“This means that businesses and consumers are less likely to want to participate in e-waste recycling,” Picciotti said. “Electronics that are being produced with low precious metal content, high amounts of plastics and cheap base metals pose a big problem for the e-waste industry as a whole. That said, there is still plenty of opportunity to be successful in the e-waste recycling industry for now. The best way for an e-recycler to remain profitable is to continually improve upon its processes to find every ounce of value within the electronic device.”
Changing Direction
Obviously e-waste is going to keep growing as we all use more devices in our daily lives, but it is the way we recycle these devices is what is important. “It is simply not acceptable to just throw a device away, it must be responsibly recycled and reused,” Pigott said.
Picciotti believes e-waste will evolve from a mostly voluntary program to a necessary and possibly mandatory system. “Although it would be best for people to embrace e-waste recycling as much as they embrace their latest tech, rather than being forced to recycle through more regulations on the public,” Picciotti said.
“The challenge the world faces in the future is that people need to truly understand how much of the earth is destroyed, how many workers and citizens in developing nations are harmed and how long it takes the earth to regenerate after mining for the required resources like gold, that it takes to pump out more and more electronics to the world,” Picciotti said. “I believe it begins with manufacturers producing higher quality, longer lasting and upgradable electronic devices. It may sound bad for the e-waste industry, but it’s not. At my company, Global Electronic Recycling, I would happily recycle a lesser volume of electronic devices that are of higher quality than to recycle larger amounts of cheap electronics.”
Kasper pointed to a new report from United Nations University, published together with UN Environment, that highlights future e-waste scenarios.Under a baseline scenario, the amount of e-waste will more than double by 2050, to reach roughly 111 million tons per year. The report shares that these quantities alone do not tell the whole story, saying: “It is really about how industries, policies and consumers react to the situation. While there is an opportunity to create sustainable production and consumption systems for electronics, this cannot be achieved by continuing the way we do business. In order to meet the growing demand, while also addressing the unexpected nature of technological evolution, a drastic change is needed in the electronics sector.”
“Moving forward, it’s clear that the collection of unwanted electronics needs to improve to ensure protection for our environment and that these materials end up in the right hands for data destruction,” Kasper said. “Old tube TVs have not been manufactured for a number of years, yet are still appearing in the waste stream. E-waste will continue to be around and grow as we remain hungry for new technology. As recyclers, we are going to have to stay on our game and be educated about the latest technology. Our world, and recycling, is commodity and technology driven.”
Published in the December 2021 Edition
