• Home
  • News
  • In-depth
  • Opinion
  • Energy
    • Wind
    • Marine
    • Solar
    • Biomass
    • Nuclear
    • CCS
    • Infrastructure
  • Policy
    • Politics
    • Legislation
    • Taxation
  • Management
    • Marketing
    • Risk
    • Skills
    • Incentives
    • Carbon Accounting
  • Technology
    • Waste
    • Recycling
    • R&D
    • Efficiency
    • IT
  • Investment
    • Carbon Trading
    • Offsets
    • Venture Capital
  • Net Zero Now
  • Events & Awards
  • SDG Hub
  • Industry Voice
  • Newsletters
  • Sign in
  •  
      • Newsletters
      • Account details
      • Contact support
      • Sign out
     
    • You are currently accessing BusinessGreen via your Enterprise account.

      If you already have an account please use the link below to sign in.

      If you have any problems with your access or would like to request an individual access account please contact our customer service team.

      Phone: +44 (0) 1858 438800

      Email: [email protected]

      • Sign in
  • Follow us
    • Twitter
    • LinkedIn
    • Newsletters
    • Facebook
    • YouTube
    • Instagram
  • Free Trial
  • Subscribe
  • Events & Awards
    • Upcoming events
      event logo
      NZF Pathway - Finance

      This exclusive half day online event will investigate how all businesses can support and accelerate the transition to low and net zero carbon buildings, while maximising the financial and productivity opportunities that will result.

      • Date: 16 Mar 2021
      • Online Event
      event logo
      Net Zero Festival 2021

      Net Zero Festival is the world's first business festival dedicated to exploring, advancing, and celebrating the global transition to a net zero emission economy. Join us at BusinessGreen's Net Zero Festival – for leaders who won't wait until 2050 to build a better business, and a better world.

      • Date: 29 Sep 2021
      • Worldwide
      View all events
  • SDG Hub
Business Green
Business Green
  • Home
  • News
  • In-depth
  • Opinion
  • Energy
  • Policy
  • Management
  • Technology
  • Investment
  • Net Zero Now
 
    • Newsletters
    • Account details
    • Contact support
    • Sign out
 
  • You are currently accessing BusinessGreen via your Enterprise account.

    If you already have an account please use the link below to sign in.

    If you have any problems with your access or would like to request an individual access account please contact our customer service team.

    Phone: +44 (0) 1858 438800

    Email: [email protected]

    • Sign in
  • Hot topics
  • Carbon offset markets
  • Green aviation
  • Deforestation
  • Net Zero Finance
  • Waste

WRAP reveals plan to wrestle with daunting eWaste challenge

  • James Murray
  • James Murray
  • @James_BG
  • 19 November 2014
  • Tweet  
  • Facebook  
  • LinkedIn  
  • Send to  
0 Comments

New ESAP initiative to kick off with in-depth exploration of the complex waste challenges faced by the electronics industry

In the 15 years since I bought my first mobile phone, I have only upgraded three times. There was the blue brick type thing I bought in my last year at University, which was traded in for a flip screen mobile, back when such designs were vaguely fashionable. That eventually broke sometime around 2005 and was replaced with a silver Nokia whose brand name escaped me, but which lasted for a good few years until the charging socket gave out. That takes me up to today and a Nokia smart phone which does everything I require of a phone, while inviting near constant bemusement and thinly veiled criticism from iPhone owners.

This history of phone ownership makes me extremely unusual, according to figures quoted by Kyle Wiens of iFixit at waste advisory body WRAP's Resources Limited conference yesterday. The co-founder of the online repair manual revealed 26 per cent of smart phones break within 24 month, while one in 10 people have an accident with their phone in the first 12 months of ownership. And yet sticking with the same phone for as long as possible brings with it significant environmental benefits. According to WRAP's chief executive Liz Goodwin, you would have to use a mobile phone for 30 years to match the energy use required to extract the raw materials and manufacture the device.

Related articles

  • Inside the UK's largest domestic vehicle-to-grid project
  • Major retailers are backing these nine alternatives to single-use plastic bags
  • TCFD ASAP: Inside the fast-evolving world of TCFD reporting
  • Britain's right-wing tabloids have turned to 'green nationalism' to sell climate action

It is this combination of resource intensive manufacturing processes, low levels of durability, and constant cultural and marketing pressure on people to upgrade devices, as well as global supply chains, and poor recycling and re-use infrastructure that makes eWaste one of the most intractable challenges faced by those businesses and NGOs committed to building a more circular economy.

As Goodwin explained yesterday, the UK electronics industry faces a £400m annual bill from householder product returns, loses 500kg of gold each year through inadequate recycling processes, and is failing to exploit a £3bn opportunity that could be realised through greater re-use of products that are typically bought, used for a couple of years, and then discarded.

These are the challenges WRAP is attempting to address with the launch of a new initiative, dubbed the Electrical and Electronic Sustainability Action Plan or ESAP, which aims to emulate the success enjoyed by the advisory body's Courtauld Commitment on retail and food waste and its Sustainable Clothing Action Plan. The initiative was officially kicked off yesterday, with 50 businesses and organisations, including Beko, B&Q, Dell, Microsoft, Next, Sainsbury's, Samsung, Sky, and Veolia, signing up to the group.

The group has agreed to begin work on five "themes" with a view to eventually signing up to a voluntary agreement centred on "testing" waste reduction and reuse targets. The five themes cover extending product durability, minimising product returns, better understanding and influencing consumer behaviour to encourage product durability and reparability, implementing profitable, resilient, and resource efficient business models, and gaining greater value from re-use and recycling.

However, Goodwin is under no illusions as to the complexities and challenges that will emerge as the group attempts to make progress on each of these fronts. Firstly, it is often difficult to work out which business models offer the greatest environmental gains. For example, recent research has suggested that as digital files get larger the argument that downloads have a lower environmental footprint than CDs is no longer as convincing. However, then again the shift by some companies towards data centres that are powered using renewable energy could serve to lower the footprint of downloads once again.

Then there is the challenge of convincing some of the electronics and appliances companies that have pioneered the concept of throw away consumerism to embrace re-use and durability that could threaten their existing revenue streams. "This is going to be a lot more difficult than working on food waste, where everyone agrees food waste is a bad thing," Goodwin admits, acknowledging that while the new group is committed to making progress there are some corporate "dinosaurs" in the electronics industry that are entirely wedded to resource inefficient, single use, frequent upgrade business models. "This group is about bringing together those businesses who want to make some of these changes happen and they can then drive the consumer demand [for better products] that will force the others to follow."

12

Further reading

The case for resource loops
  • Waste
  • 18 November 2014
Peers mull measures to tackle food waste mountain through supermarket donations
  • Waste
  • 19 November 2014
  • Tweet  
  • Facebook  
  • LinkedIn  
  • Send to  
  • Topics
  • Waste
  • Recycling
  • IT
  • eWaste
  • Zero Waste
  • In-depth
  • Circular Economy
  • Resource Efficiency

More on Waste

    • Waste
Major retailers are backing these nine alternatives to single-use plastic bags
    • Waste
    • 19 February 2021
Riverford is ditching single use plastic bags for its deliver boxes | Credit: Riverford
    • Supply chain
Waitrose and Riverford hail progress in driving down plastic packaging
    • Supply chain
    • 19 February 2021
    • Waste
No stone unturned: How getting to net zero touches every sector of the economy
    • Waste
    • 18 February 2021
A number of UK supermarkets have begun introducing their own reverse vending machines for plastic bottles | Credit: Morrisons
    • Recycling
MPs to probe plans for deposit return recycling scheme in England
    • Recycling
    • 15 February 2021
Credit: David Edelstein
    • Recycling
Michelin rolls out plans for pioneering tyre recycling plant
    • Recycling
    • 15 February 2021
Coca-Cola's new 100 per cent recycled plastic bottle line-up | Credit: Coca-Cola Company
    • Supply chain
Coca-Cola brings its first 100 per cent recycled plastic bottle to the US
    • Supply chain
    • 10 February 2021
Credit: Vanguard Renewables
    • Biomass
Unilever, Starbucks are founding members in venture to turn food waste into energy
    • Biomass
    • 05 February 2021
Veolia’s facilities transform non-recyclable waste into energy for over 400,000 homes
    • Waste
Veolia announces plan for Energy from Waste carbon capture trial
    • Waste
    • 04 February 2021

More news

Carbon Tracker to government: Clean energy beats gas on every metric - so choose it
  • Energy
Carbon Tracker to government: Clean energy beats gas on every metric - so choose it

Financial think tank Carbon Tracker has urged the government to take its "foot off the gas" when planning future energy supply

  • 25 February 2021
Ad Net Zero climate initiative unveils supporters and working groups
  • Work
Ad Net Zero climate initiative unveils supporters and working groups

An initiative to reach net zero in the advertising industry by the end of 2030 today provided further details of how it will enact its action plan, which was published last year

  • 25 February 2021
'Survive and thrive': Over 600 top businesses launch new network in bid to bolster climate resilience
  • Management
'Survive and thrive': Over 600 top businesses launch new network in bid to bolster climate resilience

A new group bringing together businesses with revenues totaling over $3tr and around 10 million employees has pledged to work to build resilience to the climate crisis and other potential economic shocks

  • 25 February 2021
Boost for biofuels as E10 petrol given green light across UK
  • Supply chain
Boost for biofuels as E10 petrol given green light across UK

Government claims using higher proportion of bioethanol in petrol can help cut car CO2 while boosting jobs across the biofuel sector

  • 25 February 2021
blog comments powered by Disqus
Back to Top

Most read

Bulb co-founder steps down to focus on battery storage venture
Bulb co-founder steps down to focus on battery storage venture
Judge overturns approval for 1.8GW Norfolk Vanguard project
Judge overturns approval for 1.8GW Norfolk Vanguard project
HSBC, Barclays, NatWest join Prince of Wales' net zero banking task force
HSBC, Barclays, NatWest join Prince of Wales' net zero banking task force
Michelin and Bridgestone accelerate green tyre innovations
Michelin and Bridgestone accelerate green tyre innovations
Labour slams 'shambolic delivery' of Green Homes Grants, as reports suggest scheme could be axed
Labour slams 'shambolic delivery' of Green Homes Grants, as reports suggest scheme could be axed
  • Contact Us
  • Marketing solutions
  • About Incisive Media
  • Terms and conditions
  • Policies
  • Careers
  • Cookie Settings
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Newsletters
  • Facebook
  • YouTube
  • Instagram

Incisive Footer Logo

© Incisive Business Media (IP) Limited, Published by Incisive Business Media Limited, New London House, 172 Drury Lane, London WC2B 5QR, registered in England and Wales with company registration numbers 09177174 & 09178013

Digital publisher of the year
Digital publisher of the year 2010, 2013, 2016 & 2017
Loading