Electronic Waste Management

Today is World Cleanup Day. One particular type of waste is the fastest growing one - e-waste. Over 50 million tons of e-waste are generated each year globally, with less than 20% being properly recycled. The environmental and health impacts are alarming—harmful chemicals pollute our air, soil, and water. Businesses can make a big difference - here's how: 1️⃣ Adopt a Circular Economy: Design products for durability, repair, and recycling. Keep electronic devices in the loop longer! 2️⃣ E-Waste Recycling Programs: Partner with certified e-waste recycling companies to ensure proper disposal and recovery of valuable materials. 3️⃣ Go Digital: Reduce paper use and unnecessary hardware purchases by leveraging cloud storage and digital collaboration tools. 4️⃣ Employee Awareness: Encourage responsible e-waste management among your workforce—host e-waste collection drives or offer incentives for recycling old devices! #ReduceEWaste #CircularEconomy #Sustainability #GreenTech #EcoFriendlyBusinesses

Did you know electronic manufacturers are legally required to recycle a part of what they sell later? I have been researching on this topic for sometime now and found that if a company sold, say, 100 tonnes of ACs or phones 6–7 years ago, they’re asked to collect 60 tonnes (60%) of that back and recycle it responsibly (𝘜𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘳 𝘌-𝘞𝘢𝘴𝘵𝘦 (𝘔𝘢𝘯𝘢𝘨𝘦𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵) 𝘙𝘶𝘭𝘦𝘴, 2022) This target will further increase to 70% and 80% in subsequent years. Sounds fair, right? But imagine the headache for the manufacturers: ❓ How do they track lakhs of old electronic items sitting in homes and offices? ❓ How do they convince people to give them up? ❓ How do they build a pan-India logistics + recycling infra for this? For most brands, this is a compliance nightmare. I was recently deep-diving into Attero for their rare-earth recycling work, and that’s when I came across Selsmart's model, which is their own D2C platform. And it is exactly solving this gap. Selsmart helps brands: 🟢 Run exchange programs where consumers trade old electronic items for value. 🟢 Handle the entire pickup-to-recycling process via their tech platform. 🟢 Turn what was once just a legal burden into an actual sales funnel, because when customers get good value for old products, they’re far more likely to buy a new one. For consumers, it’s a win too. Instead of dumping an old fridge or phone with a random scrap dealer, you can hand it over into a responsible channel and get cash, vouchers, or discounts back. Honestly, it’s a smart way of making compliance fuel business growth, while fixing one of the biggest waste problems we have. Not everything “green” has to come at a cost. Sometimes it just takes rethinking the system.

Battery recycling using orange peels - pioneered by Prof Madhavi Srinivasan from the Energy Research Institute @ NTU. "One day, while she was at an orange juice vending machine, she thought why not just use one type of fruit peel for their project. She and her team then proceeded to make use of only orange peel, collected from the same canteen stall, to recover precious metals from spent batteries. Orange peel is rich in sugars and natural acids that boost the dissolution of metals, They have partnered with battery recycling and processing company Se-cure Waste Management (SWM) since 2023 to dissolve metals found in lithium-ion batteries being recycled by SWM with chemical solvents derived from fruit peel waste. The battery recycling facility can process up to 2,000 litres of spent shredded battery mixed with fruit-peel-derived solvents to extract electrode materials such as cobalt, lithium, nickel, and manganese. NTU and SWM plan to commercialise this process in 2024 and sell the recycled materials to battery makers around the world. “We have collected data that the cost reduction (of) using our technology is 20 to 40 per cent,” said Prof Madhavi, referring to the cost of the extraction process." https://lnkd.in/ghJnr4GR

♻️ What Happens to a Tesla Battery After It Reaches the End of Its Life? When people talk about electric vehicles, the conversation usually focuses on range, charging speed, or performance. But one of the most fascinating engineering stories begins after the battery reaches the end of its automotive life. A modern EV battery pack isn’t simply discarded. Instead, it goes through a highly controlled recycling process: ⚡ Step 1: Safe Disassembly Trained technicians carefully dismantle the battery pack using insulated tools to minimize electrical and thermal risks. 🔋 Step 2: Cell Separation The battery modules are opened, and thousands of individual lithium-ion cells are separated for further processing. ♻️ Step 3: Material Recovery Advanced recycling technologies recover valuable materials such as: • Lithium • Nickel • Cobalt • Copper • Aluminum • Graphite These critical materials can then be refined and reintroduced into the battery supply chain, reducing dependence on newly mined resources. 🌍 Why It Matters Battery recycling is becoming one of the most important pillars of the EV industry because it: ✅ Conserves critical raw materials ✅ Reduces environmental impact and mining activities ✅ Lowers the carbon footprint of battery production ✅ Supports a circular economy for electric mobility As EV adoption continues to accelerate worldwide, efficient battery recycling will be just as important as battery innovation itself. The future of sustainable mobility isn’t only about building better batteries—it’s also about ensuring today’s batteries become tomorrow’s resources. Question for the community: Do you think battery recycling will become one of the biggest industries of the next decade? #ElectricVehicles #EVBattery #BatteryRecycling #Sustainability #CircularEconomy #LithiumIon #CleanEnergy #AutomotiveEngineering #Innovation #FutureMobility #Manufacturing #Engineering #Tesla #RecyclingTechnology

₹2,000 Crore Opportunity: How India’s E-Waste Crisis Is Becoming a Circular Economy Business India doesn’t have a tech waste problem. It has a waste monetisation problem. 1. Old model: Dump electronics, informal scrap handling, zero accountability. 2. New model: Formal recycling, data-secure disposal, material recovery at scale. This is being led by Eco Recycling Ltd., from compliance → profit engine ✅ NUMBERS 1. India e-waste generated: 3.8 million tonnes/year 2. Informal handling: 90% 3. Market size: ₹16,500+ Cr (2026) 4,. 2031 projection: ₹23,000+ Cr 5. Growth rate: 7%+ CAGR Massive supply. Low formal capture ✅ Real Trigger: Data Centre Explosion India is building a ₹10+ lakh crore digital infrastructure. But every server, Every laptop & battery eventually becomes waste. More digital growth = more toxic output. This is the hidden cost of Digital India. ✅ The Business Model: Data > Scrap Traditional recyclers sell metal. Ecoreco sells trust. Certified data destruction, secure asset disposal & corporate compliance because for companies: Data risk > scrap value. That’s where margins come from. ✅ Operating Engine 1. Recycling capacity: 25,200 MTPA 2. Lithium-ion capacity: 6,000 MTPA 3. Global reach: 120+ countries 4. Listed on: Bombay Stock Exchange. 5. The biggest problem in recycling is collection. Ecoreco solved it with mobile shredding units, on-site collection, corporate pickups & waste doesn’t come to them. They go to the waste. ✅ Policy Advantage: EPR Economics Under India’s e-waste rules, Companies must recycle 60% of output. Non-compliance = penalties. Enter Ecoreco. Acts as an EPR partner, generates compliance certificates & monetises regulation. This is revenue visibility. ✅ Hidden Goldmine: Urban Mining Inside every device: Gold, silver, cobalt & rare earth metals. India imports these at scale. Ecoreco extracts them locally. This reduces dependency & creates margin. ✅ Future Bet: EV + Battery Recycling With EV adoption rising, battery waste will explode. Ecoreco is already positioned with Lithium-ion recycling capacity & early-mover advantage. ✅ Let me share the #Rajspectives 1. The Informal sector still dominates due to cash payments, no compliance costs & faster transactions. 2. Waste is the next raw material economy. 3. Compliance-driven industries create predictable revenue. 4. Data security is a premium layer in recycling. 5. Logistics is the real bottleneck. Circular economy is not sustainability; it’s profitability. The biggest shift of 2026: India is not just producing more tech. It’s producing more recoverable value. And the companies that win won’t just build products. They’ll build systems to recover what’s already been used. Hosted by RECOMMERCE, I will be key speaker at their coming event, decoding Circular Economy, and will be launching an analysis on Circular Economy Outlook in India and globally, along with the Ministry of Karnataka. See you there! #india #economy #business #sustainability #strategy

62 billion kg of e-waste in 2022. Only 22% was recycled. That’s 48 BILLION KGs.. ...either dumped, burned, or forgotten in storerooms. The real issue? Most firms don’t track what they own. Discarded switches, laptops, and servers become invisible liabilities. E-waste isn’t just an environmental issue. It’s a failure in governance, process, and accountability. The solution isn’t new technology. It’s: Better records Smarter workflows Certified partners... ...who show up with trucks and certificates You can automate IT asset disposition inside ServiceNow or OTRS Group. ▸Set end-of-life triggers. ▸Attach recycling certificates. ▸Report WEEE compliance directly. Enviroserve UAE and Sims Limited India are certified ITAD partners. Dell Technologies, Lenovo, and Huawei run take-back schemes with secure data wipes. Do this ↬ Catalogue every IT asset. ↬ Assign an owner and disposal date. ↬ Automate disposition in your ITSM tool. ↬ Partner only with certified e-waste recyclers. ↬ Refurbish and reissue internally where possible. ↬ Use OEM programs to close the loop securely. E-waste is not someone else’s problem. It’s your hardware lifecycle. And ESG recovers real asset value. Track it. Reuse it. Prove it. Save this if you manage infrastructure.

Can I politely suggest that you start auditing your ITAD partners? Far too many providers parrot phrases like “zero to landfill” but the truth is often the polar opposite. A recent BBC report makes grim reading: massive volumes of e-waste are still being dumped in developing countries. At sites like Agbogbloshie in Ghana, children are exposed to toxic fumes as they burn discarded electronics to extract precious metals. The result? Life-threatening respiratory problems, lead poisoning, and environmental devastation. Despite international regulations, illegal trafficking of e-waste is getting worse. To avoid getting sucked into this you need to be asking hard questions of your supply chain and providers, getting clarity on what happens with your waste and don’t take high level fluff as a valid response. Too many providers abdicate responsibility by pushing it out to other 3rd party companies. BTW - I’m not suggesting that all providers are bad, we have some absolutely awesome providers who offer quality services, the problem is that it can be hard to tell the good from the bad! https://lnkd.in/eGVZMegN

New job for old phones… A team in Estonia took four discarded smartphones, pulled the batteries to avoid leaks, and built a small data center. The setup included 3D-printed housing, power control circuits, and likely some external sensors. They sank it underwater to monitor marine life. It worked without a diver or any wired setup. The phones collected and processed the data directly on-site. This kind of work used to need a human with a camera, diving down and bringing footage back up. Now the system handles everything in place, without delay. When one phone breaks, they just swap it out. The casing and wiring stay put. That’s modular thinking. You design for reuse, not just for recycling. They’re testing it on land too. At a bus stop, it counts passengers in real time and helps improve transit using local processing, not new hardware. Since e-waste is rising fast, with over 62 million tons dumped in 2022 and most unrecycled, putting old devices to work near the data could make a real difference. We’re not short on computing power. We’re short on smart reuse. How many old devices are we wasting just because they look outdated? Daily #electronics insights from Asia—follow me, Keesjan, and never miss a post by ringing my 🔔. #technology #innovation

Extended Producer Responsibility is one of the main tools to finance #waste management in the EU but how useful is it to foster the #circularity we need to increase EU’s #competitiveness & #strategicautonomy? 🤔 We are releasing a study which proposes a framework to not only address the challenges of current #EPR systems but also transform these systems into catalysts for the circular economy transition. After 30 years of implementation, EPR has successfully mobilized resources to cover parts of waste management but EU’s circularity is not increasing (in fact, waste generation continues to rise whilst reuse and repair decline). The study also delves into the performance of different EPR systems (oversight, enforcement, reporting, collection performance, cost-coverage, transparency, free-riding). The global context has shifted dramatically since EPR was first implemented. Supply chain disruptions, energy security concerns, and increasing demand for critical raw materials have highlighted the EU's resource vulnerability. In this new context, EPR must evolve from a waste management financing mechanism to a catalyst for a systemic shift toward resource efficiency and circularity that underpins the EU's competitiveness and strategic autonomy. We propose a two-pillar approach to address the current challenges and build on the new global context: 1- System Optimisation: Creating harmonised EU EPR principles and establishing a European EPR advisory body to reduce administrative burden, combat free-riding, and create a true single market for circular economy. 2- Circular Economy Enabler: Expanding EPR to finance prevention, reuse, and repair – not just waste management – through repair funds and reuse infrastructure. Connect EPR to broader resource efficiency tools and create global EPR frameworks to level the playing field. Currently only the 1st pillar is discussed in Brussels whilst the 2nd one is neglected. This triggers what in the study is referred to as the “EPR paradox” which occurs when systems designed to manage waste become barriers to circularity options that are higher in the waste hierarchy. For a lot more info I invite you to read the study! 👇