The enormous opportunity of e-waste recycling
Today's guest blog is authored by Jon Smieja of GreenBiz Group. The original post can be read here.
I’m quick to admit when I fall short of my circular economy aspirations in my personal life. Take the number of outdated and unused electronics lying around my house. The current inventory includes multiple old tablets, two laptop computers and a handful of old cell phones. I even have a third generation iPod Nano laying around somewhere. My point is many of us have closets and junk drawers full of this stuff, and it represents a huge missed opportunity for the circular economy.
To get a better understanding of the size of that opportunity, I visited an electronics collection facility near my home in Minnesota. Repowered, based in Saint Paul, has processed over 40 million pounds of electronics since it opened its doors in 2011. At about 3 million pounds processed…