E-scrap: : A vicious cycle?

• Autores: Industrial Minerals
• Localización: Industrial Minerals, ISSN 0019-8544, Nº. 589, 2016 (Ejemplar dedicado a: Diciembre/Enero)
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • In Europe, increasing emphasis has been placed on "closed loop" manufacturing, the "circular economy" and "urban mining" as more muscular terms for recycling and similar initiatives are being pursued in North America. These two regions represent the largest sources of electronic scrap (e-scrap) in the world, partly because they have the most developed consumer economies for electronic products and therefore generate the most of this type of waste, but also because they have the most advanced recycling infrastructure.

    "The market is tough at the moment and it's hard to get hold of material," Jan-Willem Dekker, an e-scrap trader at Netherlands-based Krommenhoek Metals, told IM. He explained that in addition to the lack of hard drives in many modern devices, a significant proportion of spent products are not finding their way into waste streams at all. "It's easier to keep an old phone or iPad in a drawer or cupboard and forget about it rather than scrap it - you couldn't do that with the old desktops," he said.