Providing strategic advice and market insights for optimizing manufacturing relationships and achieving profitable environmental strategies to clients in the Americas, EMEA, and Asia since 1987.By Jonathan Gilbert, TFI Logistics Consultant
A recent MIT Senseable City Lab project, BackTalk, placed small GPS devices in electronic waste (e-waste) to track where our discarded items go for recycling and disposal. The result was so surprising — uncovering such far distances traveled by the e-waste — that the project is currently exhibited in New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Given the high carbon footprint and cost of transportation, today’s e-waste recycling infrastructure could be taxing both profits and the environment. We at TFI think there may be a solution.
MIT’s team examined a concept they called the “removal chain.” One finding was that e-waste often moves via “convoluted” and inefficient paths to recycling centers. A blog in the New York Times stated: “According to Carlo Ratti, director of the Senseable City Lab, the mapping raised some serious questions about the usefulness and net environmental impact of recycling certain electronics.”
Excessive shipping activity is waste, ironically consuming resources for the purpose of recycling physical waste. The most egregious example from MIT showed junk cell phones moving from the Seattle Area all the way to Florida for processing.
We believe that the configuration of the current recycling marketplace causes most of this wasted transportation. As e-waste is sorted into various streams, it is routed to whichever company or region provides the cheapest processing/highest payout to the recycler — or to the few facilities that are certified to process an item. For example, the MIT project noted that only 13 facilities in the world are certified to smelt down and recycle the cathode ray tubes of old television sets, and all are in Asia.
This got us at TFI thinking about how to make the system work better. Beyond the obvious answers of reducing consumption (more virtualization anyone?) and re-using obsolete devices for other purposes, moving recycling activity closer to the origins of the waste streams would help substantially.
One possible way to “move” processing closer to demand would be to trade recycling credits between service providers using an arrangement like tolling. Tolling agreements are the system currently used in the refining and industrial gas industries allowing the trading of credits for the transport/processing/conversion/delivery of various products. This allows the most efficient provider to make or deliver the product regardless of who owns the contract with the customer.
Applying tolling agreements to e-waste recycling services would enable companies to swap capacity where demand is high by exchanging credits, potentially saving costs and the environment in the process. Recyclers would trade capacity with each other, allowing the closest facilities to handle demand in each region.
What do you think?
– Would this new arrangement allow for more efficient e-waste logistics?
– What issues might exist with this plan?
Would you like to talk with us further about this topic? We’re interested in hearing from you.
Tags: e-waste recycling, efficient logistics, tolling agreements, waste reduction
I would agree IF you could consider all recyclers equal which needs better policing…hopefully third party certification to R2 or e-Stewards works. There are unscrupulous companies still out there.
Is there a similar problem in the EU? Will we have a similar problem in India with their new E-waste rules?
Scott -
I concur, and certainly are still major differences out there. One way to sort out the proper partners is to use generally accepted measurements of quality and efficacy.
R2 and e-Stewards standards are helping, and we believe that the industry is headed for much better compliance in the future. You can learn more about these two programs in a recent whitepaper by Pam Gordon. The document can be found here:
http://www.techforecasters.com/whitepapers/wp_comparisons_of_e-stewards_and_R2.pdf
Thank you for your comment!
Dorothea, There has long been a strong sentiment in Europe — more so than in the USA — that responsible treatment of electronics waste should be conducted in the region of the electronic product’s use. (Refer to the Basel Convention.) A Swiss venture has facilitated recycling facilities in India, Colombia, and other countries, which is noble in terms of safe, responsible recycling and jobs in those countries (hopefully, for products used in those countries and not shipped in from other shores). Certainly, producer responsibility for e-waste, such as the recent Indian law, can start to address illegal dumping of e-waste in developing countries. Overall — to Jon Gilbert’s points in our blog — we want to encourage producers and recyclers alike to mitigate wasteful travel of used electronics on the way to treatment facilities and instead save money and the harmful environmental effects of unnecessary transportation by treating e-waste closer to the product’s final use.
I think concept of “moving processing closer” is obviously what has to happen but I think the talk of trading credits and tolling agreements is premature. We have yet to develop a standardized method and infrastructure to economical disposal of general toxic waste let alone ewaste. Why the basic fundamentals of recycling are not required PRIOR to the release of a product with the ability to cause substantial environmental impact is beyond comprehension. The eventual concept of REACH appears to put the onus on manufacturers to provide for the ultimate disposal of toxic materials (cradle to grave), but is this fair? In North America there is not enough government intervention (never thought I’d say that) in providing areas to properly dispose of toxins. For example, while not ewaste, my town/county does not provide for a legal way to dispose of transmission fluid. Hybrid vehicle owners have encountered issues with the disposal of batteries. Or even regular batteries. The list is endless.
At some point a Yucca Mountain scenario will make the most sense for the disposal of many other toxins beyond radiation which will collectively be a bigger problem than spent fuel rods. Otherwise we continue to dump our toxic waste either illegally, or dishonorably in developing countries (or US Territories; think Marianas Islands). Ultimately the decision will be economical rather than ecological without government action.
Jonathan and Pamela,
What an interesting finding by the MIT Senseable City Lab project! Thank you for sharing the findings and your suggested solution to the challenge of long-distance disposal.
The BackTalk study mentions the challenge of scarcity of facilities for particular types of disposal, which is a driver for longer transportation distances. Because the project focused on items discarded here in Seattle, which is at the northwest corner of the U.S., I would be curious to see how much variation there is in transportation for discarded electronics from locations in other parts of the U.S.
A couple of things sprang to mind when I read Jonathan’s blog post. First, it indicates the power of having data on a particular process. Because BackTalk did this RPS tracking project, we now know how far and where these items traveled in the disposal stream. In general, it would be incredibly useful to have more data like this in the industry so that better decisions can be made in both design and disposal of electronic items.
Second, this project suggests that this recycling and disposal path could be optimized to reduce transportation costs and distance, and the reality is that freight costs are often by far the cheapest part of the disposal process, at least at current prices. In fact, I was surprised to discover that the freight costs were minimal relative to processing and disposal costs when I studied electronics disposal in my doctoral research. As a result, it hasn’t been an industry priority to reduce shipping distance based on cost. Nevertheless, having data on the exact paths of disposed items provides a sound basis for an improved system-wide disposal process that minimizes transportation.
Thanks again, Jonathan and Pamela, for bringing this study to our attention. What a great insight.
Theresa Barker, Ph.D. (Seattle, Washington)
We’re a group of volunteers and starting a brand new scheme in our community. Your web site provided us with valuable information to work on. You have performed an impressive process and our whole group might be thankful to you.