Electronics recycling was in “a very complex environment” in which there was “an absolute need for a dramatic change,” commented Helmut Kolba of Germany-based Remondis Electrorecycling GmbH in hosting his first meeting of BIR’s E-Scrap Committee since becoming its Chairman.

The likely scale of that change was conveyed by the two guest speakers at an e-scrap session during the 2021 BIR convention. 

Sophistication needed

Marc Affüpper, COO of Germany-based TSR Recycling GmbH & Co. KG, said there’s a lot of progress in the sector over the past three decades and that recycling codes have significantly improved all over the world as compared to earlier times. The global regulations for processing WEEE and cross-border shipping have become much stricter and synchronised, “for sure there is space for improvement, but it is much better than it was earlier,” noted Affüpper.

He acknowledged that there were “interesting times ahead of us”. He envisaged closer co-operation over the certification of “green raw materials” as well as “the need to grow efforts to close loops for the entire material spectrum.”  

Affüpper said recycling processes would need to become “more sophisticated” given that, for example, the plastics mix had increased its average share of small domestic appliances from under 20 percent in 2013 to nearer 30 percent in 2020; over the same seven-year period, average metal content had dropped from approaching 45 percent to around 30 percent. He said, with an increased plastic mix, one needs to think about ways to separate different plastic types, how we can improve recycling rates for plastics; so “we need to keep developing our processes” to improve recycling rates. 

There is also a need for an open dialogue between the raw material industry, the manufacturers and the recyclers, he commented. The raw material producers and e-manufacturers have a traditionally good relationship, “I’m very often missing the long term and strategic cooperation between the producers and the recyclers,” he said adding that there is a need for more intensified dialogue, more common projects improved exchange of information and cooperation as WEEE partners.

On the issue of legislation governing electronics recycling, Affüpper called for “more global synchronization to get closer to a level playing field” as well as the stricter enforcement of existing regulations. There is need for more support from the local governments as well, Affüpper noted. He also identified the need for a holistic view of changing waste streams and for an understanding of shifting consumer habits, including the fact that electronics were being discarded significantly more quickly than even a decade ago.

Disrupting existing business models

The European Green Deal promised to disrupt existing business models for electronics by creating an extended circular economy built around repair, reuse and remanufacturing, according to Klaus Hieronymi, consultant for HP in the framework of the European Recycling Platform. In addition to recycling at end of life, therefore, the objective was to “have many more circles beforehand to extend the usage time of the product.”

Essentially, he said the intention is to reduce the sale of new products as compared to what it is today by a certain time; and for the new products to be replaced by the sale of secondhand goods. “All of that is based on a simple view that repair or remanufacturing is not impacting the environment as much as the production of a new product, independent of what product it is,” he highlighted. The carbon footprint for remanufacturing a laptop, he noted by way of example, was only a quarter of that for a new product.  

To illustrate the EU is serious about this goal, Hieronymi said they have developed what is called the “repair index” which will become a product feature where the customer can see the repairability and the network of repairs which one can get for this product, so the customer can determine whether the product was good enough or not. “They want to promote reuse, increase the secondhand market” and there are a couple of programmes underway, he noted, adding that they would also like to see higher deployment of new business models.

Such a revolution would create “a much stronger demand for recycled materials” as well as a corresponding requirement for suppliers to certify recycled contents across all material streams. Furthermore, the changes would encourage manufacturers “to keep their arms around their products” through buy-back and sourcing of parts. Harvesting of spare parts therefore represented a “big opportunity” for the recycling sector, according to Hieronymi.