A couple of New Year’s Eves ago I was in London, welcoming in 2013 with the city’s famous fireworks display. No doubt about it, the fireworks were impressive – what’s not impressive about burning £2 million on an event that only lasts a few minutes? – but I was more taken aback by the fact that almost every person present was watching the event through their phones: a mediated reality to try to capture the moment for eternity.
Aside from the questions this raised concerning the nature of reality and our perception of it, I was left wondering “What on earth happens to all these mobile phones?” While the memories may have been captured for eternity, the phones were certainly not going to last for ever.
Electrical and electronic equipment (EEE) has become an integral part of our lives, but in true consumer fashion many of us have little, if any, idea of where the materials which compose our electronic goods come from, or what can be done to try to make our goods more durable than our fickle memories. I thought this warranted more thought, particularly as there is a lot of interesting work being done around the concept of the ‘circular economy’ to try to shift us away from a linear economic model to one which aims to keep things cycling through the economy for a WEEE bit longer.
WEEE does it come from?
Many of our consumer electronics are made from a range of weird and wonderful materials, some with rather otherworldly names like tantalum and beryllium. In addition to a range of unusual materials electrical goods house things we may be more familiar with, such as mercury, plastic, glass and a host of other metals (including copper, lead, gold, nickel and zinc). These materials are sourced from all over the world, often under circumstances which carry significant risks for local people and the environment. Needless to say, the economic system is very efficient at providing us with what we want, and in the UK 1.4 million tonnes of brand new electronic equipment was placed on the market in 2012/13 alone. That is a lot of stuff – gathered from all corners of the globe and with significant amounts of embedded energy – and it seems crazy that so much of it is simply lost from the economy after being used just once.
Welcoming in the WEEE small hours on New Year ’s Eve. Photo by Thomas Vergunst.
WEEE are we going?
The revised WEEE directive was published in 2012 and the UK government concluded its consultation on the transposition of this Directive in the autumn of 2013, with the publication of the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Regulation 2013 following shortly thereafter. This revision could have provided an ideal opportunity to help ensure that producers of EEE would be held accountable for the products we can’t seem to keep our hands off. Although some important changes have been made (like more ambitious recycling targets), the fact remains that without individual producers having to take direct responsibility for the items that they place on the market there is limited incentive for them to design their products in a way that facilitates easy recycling (never mind reuse).
The European Commission’s 7th Environmental Action Programme, which will guide European environmental policy for the period 2014 to 2020, has set the following long term vision for 2050 to help guide its actions over the coming six years:
“In 2050, we live well, within the planet’s ecological limits. Our prosperity and healthy environment stem from an innovative, circular economy where nothing is wasted and where natural resources are managed sustainably, and biodiversity is protected, valued and restored in ways that enhance our society’s resilience. Our low-carbon growth has long been decoupled from resource use, setting the pace for a safe and sustainable global society”.
With a focus on recycling, the trajectory for our unwanted WEEE is going to be a far cry from the circular economy envisaged by the European Commission. Part and parcel of an “innovative, circular economy” is an innovative policy environment that can help to break the significant inertia of our linear economy, along with all its invested interests. The linear economy has served my parents and grandparents generation very well, but is fast showing signs of reaching (or even exceeding) the ecological limits of our planet – hardly a day goes by without some mention of receding ice caps, biodiversity loss, and pressure on water and agricultural resources.
A WEEElcome change?
So what does this innovative policy environment look like? At the forefront of the circular economy debate is the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, which describes the concept as:
“an industrial system that is restorative or regenerative by intention and design… It replaces the ‘end-of-life’ concept with restoration, shifts towards the use of renewable energy, eliminates the use of toxic chemicals, which impair reuse, and aims for the elimination of waste through the superior design of materials, products, systems, and, within this, business models”.
The circular economy is therefore a lot more than just diverting waste from landfill and increasing recycling rates; it is also about encouraging innovative business models which focus on things like repairing, renting, reusing or even sharing products. Although this outlook is anathema to some, thankfully there are already a number of companies starting to look at alternative ways of doing business, such as those participating in the Circular Economy 100 programme run by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. These provide modest examples, but there remains significant scope for much wider application, and for applying circular economy principles to not just a few ‘high end’ products, but to a company’s whole product line.
On the supply side, a circular economy will require much needed support and regulation to drive further improvements in, for example, materials, design and the use of renewable energy. On the downstream side, improvements in collection and treatment of materials and products will be required, possibly with incentives being put in place to ensure that consumers return their unwanted goods in a condition that would allow them to be reused. For instance, how about a deposit refund system on all electrical equipment sold in the UK? Would a £20 deposit at the point of sale be sufficient to incentivise you to return your mobile phone in working order once you had tired of it?
Our phones – a ubiquitous modern appendage – may help us capture our memories when we are too inebriated to do so ourselves, but without concrete action and innovative policies to drive companies and consumers towards a circular economy, we may be stuck on our age old path of making, breaking, and forsaking.
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