Green Electronics

It’s the economic growth that poses biggest challenge-managing e-waste. Processing in developing nations has only recently emerged as an important issue, thus relevant research remains scarce. The overarching issue of assessing and managing the environmental impacts of electronics, however, has a history of research and implementation, especially from the 1990’s. Terming this field of research “Green Electronics”, major areas of research and activity include:

-Design for Environment

-Recycling Processes and Systems

-Eco-Labeling

-Disassembly

-Greening Supply Chains

-Life Cycle Assessment

Needs: Research and Otherwise

There are many open and important topics for research relevant to addressing the e-waste problem. Generally speaking, informal economic sectors attract little analysis from either economic or environmental perspectives. Backyard recycling of e-waste is no exception. Outstanding questions include:

-What are the real scale and nature of environmental risks associated with informal recycling?

-Are there alternative low-capital means to achieve reuse and recycling in an environmental safe way appropriate to developing countries?

-Are there instruments, such as finder’s fees, that can be used to effect a shift from informal to the formal sector? Little is known regarding the answers to any of these. At a more general level, reverse supply chains in general have received far less attention and investment compared to their forward counterparts. Here, the term forward supply chain is being used to refer to the network of firms and activities that produce and deliver goods to consumers starting from raw materials. The reverse supply chain  which collects products no longer desired by a given consumer and refurbishes for other consumers, recycles, or otherwise processes wastes.

There are many factors behind the lack of knowledge and research done to support management of informal sectors. One is that lack of human and knowledge capital to undertake analysis and planning. Generally speaking this increases as with higher consolidation and value-added of an industry. An informal sector clearly at the lowest end of this spectrum. The best-planned recycling systems are generally designed in the developed world given constraints of high wages and low demand for used machines and parts. Solution for the developing world may look quite different, but remain unknown due to lack of appropriate analysis and planning. Another is lack of an information infrastructure supporting analysis. Problems without data sources to inform analysis are often neglected.

Research alone will clearly not be sufficient to solve the problem. Even armed with appropriate knowledge, those in the informal sector have limited capacity to safely implement all processes.A new system of regulations, incentives, standards and/or investment flows is needed.

For example, enforcing regulation of the informal sector is likely impractical, thus risky parts of the reverse supply chain (such as recovery of copper from wires) at least ought to be handled by a formal, regulated sector. Achieving this clearly requires some kind of policy to ensure this, call by NGOs for a complete ban on exports of e-waste is one approach. Though it is not clear how enforceable this is and would only help for the non-domestic portion of the e-waste stream.

Another possibility is an incentive system in which a domestic formal sector is given responsibility for implementing risky processes, and is obliged to pay the informal sector an attractive price to pass on equipment/parts. Another example of an organizational need is standards for certifying equipment for the secondary market. While the Basel Convention creates a clear exemption for equipment intended for reuse, it is not yet clear how in practice to properly distinguish these from waste. These are but two examples of the kinds of organizational developments that could address the problem. Analysis and implementation of appropriate choices is needed.

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