Vodafone Germany has tied up with Closing the Loop, a Dutch startup offering certified e-waste compensation, for the One for One project to manage electronic scrap in Africa. For every new phone sold by Vodafone to its customers in Germany, Closing the Loop will collect an end-of-life device in Africa, where there is a lack of formal recycling capacity. 

This ‘one for one’ approach means that every person who buys a phone from Vodafone Germany will be made aware of their possibility to get started on making their device ‘greener’. It will enable the creation of jobs and income in countries such as Ghana, where people get paid to safely collect broken phones, the press statement said.  

Closing the Loop introduced the certified Waste Compensation service in 2016 to reduce the amount of electronics ending up in landfills in the emerging world, and to help tech buyers and sellers get started on ‘circularity’ in a pragmatic and engaging way. According to the statement, at least one million devices will be compensated each year through this initiative. 

Talking about the Waste Compensation approach, Joost de Kluijver, Director, Closing the Loop said, "E-waste compensation enables the proper collection and professional recycling of e-waste in emerging countries. As a result, it's a business model for reducing the world's fastest growing waste stream.  E-waste has long been the domain of NGOs, governments and research. The solution to the problem was often searched for in legislation or in awareness forums. The successes that those have created are not sufficient, with some 17% of e-waste being recycled at present. Waste Compensation takes a different approach, as it creates commercial value for the end-user and then uses market forces - supply & demand - to make it commercially attractive to collect & recycle e-waste in the emerging world.” 

Joost de Kluijver added, “Making IT greener is great, but it's pretty much impossible to act on as an individual. Waste compensation helps ensure that circularity is an actionable concept for the masses. It enables every person who wants to take at least a small step towards greener consumption of electronics to take that step. Note: waste compensation is by no means a solution or an end-point. It's currently the best way to get started on making tech greener.”