eWaste and Corporate Sustainability Flashcards
What is eWaste?
Any appliance with an electrical power supply (including battery operated devices)
What differentiates eWaste from regular waste?
- More toxic due to elements
- More valuable than other waste streams if reclaimed or recycled
- 90% of base metals and 97% of precious metals can be recovered and reused
What is the Value Proposition of correctly disposing of eWaste?
Compliance - ensuring you are meeting the requirements of the law
Risk mitigation - less likely to become victim to bad publicity
Value recovery - valuable waste can be recovered and returned to you/sold to offset disposal costs
How is eWaste collected?
Separated at point of collection by the owner.
Take back schemes at point of sale.
Separation out of other waste streams.
How is dismantling and pre-processing of eWaste carried out?
- Remove hazardous/re-usable/valuable components by hand and sort into different waste streams
- Coarse crushing / shredding and hand picking
- Further automated sorting
How is the end-processing of eWaste carried out?
- Final metals recovery
- Ferrous fractions sent to steel plant
- Aluminium fractions sent to aluminium smelters
- PCBs go to integrated metal smelters (needs gas control)
- Hydrometallurgy can be used where solvents dissolve key metals and leach them from the substrate
List the goals of extended producer responsibility.
- Source reduction
- Waste prevention and management of hazardous waste
- Design of more environmentally compatible products
- Closure of material loops to promote sustainable development
What is individual producer responsibility and what are its advantages/disadvantages?
The specific company is responsible for take-back and re-use/recycling of their own goods.
Advantage - it provides a direct economic incentive to design with sustainability in mind.
Disadvantage - harder to collect and route eWaste separately for each company and how do you deal with the waste of companies that no longer exist?
What is sectoral producer responsibility?
- Producers pay into a pot based on their market share to process historical WEEE
- As the scheme progresses, producers pay tariffs only for the goods they manufacture
- Goods are collected at disposal sites and point of sale
What is the WEEE directive?
Aims to impose sectoral responsibility for existing goods and individual producer responsibility for the subsequent sale of goods. Most EU countries transposed it as sectoral responsibility which drew criticism from NGOs and producers.
What is the RoHS directive?
- Aims to make it easier and cheaper to safely recycle and reduce the impact of eWaste that is improperly recycled.
- Places limits on the concentration of a number of controlled substances. This is not for the whole device, but for any component that can be separated manually.
List the RoHS controlled substances.
Lead (solder)
Mercury (LCD backlights)
CAdmium (discs)
Polybrominated Biphenyls, Polybrominated Diphenyl Ether (flame retardants in PCBs and plastics)
Maximum permitted concentration of 0.1% (0.01% for Cadmium) to any single substance that could be separated manually.
What is the Basel Convention?
- Aims to control the movement of hazardous waste between countries, particularly between developed and less developed countries
- Requires prior consent from the receiving nation
- BAN amendment aims to prohibit the shipping of waste to a number of countries
- Often subverted by labelling equipment as second-hand for re-use/refurbishment, or charitable donations
List the various parts of a Corporate Sustainability Strategy.
- Keep your house in order
- Reduce the impact of your products
- Stakeholder engagement
- Research and innovation
- Philanthropy
Keep your house in order…
Within the company itself, promotion of:
- Energy reduction and low carbon practices around facilities and travel
- Waste reduction, low emissions of hazardous substances
- Appropriate management and auditing processes for this
- Public reporting of performance
