E-Wasted, But Planning for a Better Day

I attended the E-Scrap conference in Atlanta last week, where 900 of my colleagues and I spent two days debating the state of electronics recycling. Redemtech is not itself a recycler, but uses partners to process many millions of pounds of electronics each year. So we are part of the industry by association, and we stay in close touch to ensure our downstream vendors are compliant with industry best practices. The various sessions completely ignored a glaring deficiency in the trade: the majority of electronics owners choose NOT to recycle their old computers and other e-junk when they are done with it. Stated more bluntly, the customer doesn't like, or think they need, what we are selling.

No surprise, then, that in a pre-conference survey conducted by conference sponsor E-Scrap News (download the survey), a majority of recyclers responding said that securing enough business was a critical challenge. In the conference closing session, I sat on a panel with three recyclers, and it is clear that the e-scrap industry is hoping for legislation to force a reluctant market into our waiting arms. Instead of hoping for politicians to legislate our growth, maybe we should just work on giving customers a better product.

To start with, today's recycling practices may seem green on the surface, but are not sustainable. A large majority of scrap electronics is still exported to developing countries where worker safety regulations and environmental laws are few. According the the E-Scrap News survey, the number of recyclers who export is increasing, in spite of a growing recognition of the health and environmental consequences. Those very few recyclers who process all their e-scrap domestically do so from large, centralized plants that require shipping the material hundreds of miles—at a significant cost both in monetary and carbon impact terms. Since most of the toxic content in electronics is concentrated in circuit boards, we should work on methods for local recycling of the non-toxic stuff, saving centralized, more carbon-intensive processes for the toxin-bearing material that makes up less than 10 percent by weight.

Recyclers have always rabidly guarded their processes, their sources, and their buyers. Thus the industry is founded on a culture of unaccountability and lack of transparency, and in worst cases, plays a bit of a shell game. This is contrary to the market's desire for sustainability and legal compliance. Customers want to be certain that their electronics are truly recycled—not exported to Pakistan, or sold to a processor down the street who will export them to Pakistan. We need to be able and willing to furnish the customer real proof of what we do—each and every time.

2007 has been an active year for consolidation in the recycling business. As the big get bigger, I think we should be working harder to get better too. We need to start by reforming our methods to be dramatically more sustainable—the market will be watching and measuring us on this as companies adopt green initiatives at the board level. We need to be more accountable; customers will demand proof of promised outcomes, and documentation of compliance. And to be accountable, we will need to be transparent. We must create a culture that supports the free exchange of necessary information, and the systems to support it. Customers will audit us like never before to ensure they get what they want, and we must welcome their participation in our evolution to becoming the industry we need to be. 

I admit that I am skeptical my colleagues in the trade see things the way I do. So I am committing Redemtech to developing a recycling solution that will delight customers with its convenience, provide them the assurance of full accountability and transparency, and deliver the true sustainability and compliance the market demands.