Secondary markets in electronics are vital to stopping e-waste
Rachel Meidl, 2023 – Fellow in Energy and Sustainability at the Baker Institute. “Closing the Loop on the World’s Fastest-growing Waste Stream: Electronics” 6/14,
//DH
The effective management of e-waste will contribute critically to the goal of realizing sustainability, circularity, and resource efficiency. Ultimately, the aim is to continue advancing toward a circular economy and to close the loop so that products placed on the market are designed to 1) retain value and 2) return to the market as a new material or product through recovery, remanufacturing, refurbishing, and recycling processes.
However, successfully managing e-waste and the system in which it circulates will not only rely on the development and manufacture of products based on circular principles, but the robustness of coordination across value chains and the development of strong secondary markets for valuable recycled, recovered, remanufactured, or refurbished goods and materials. The circular economy cannot simply push recycled, refurbished, or remanufactured materials to end markets; end markets have to be able to pull materials through.