By Steve Oliver, Founder & CEO musicMagpie 

With COP-26 fast approaching, much of the attention around the event has been centred on the key themes of ending coal power, phasing out polluting vehicles, making agriculture more sustainable, tackling deforestation and supporting developing countries with finance.   

While these issues are of course absolutely critical, we here at musicMagpie would suggest that there are other glaring omissions and for us that is recycling and reuse. And, more specifically, the recycling and reuse of electronics and electronic waste, or “e-waste”.  

E-waste refers to discarded electronic products with a battery or plug, such as computers and mobile phones. E-waste which isn’t recycled can end up in landfill and poses all kinds of environmental issues. Over time, the toxic chemicals inside our tech then seep into the earth’s soil and water. The chemicals released when tech is burned pollute the air, while the refrigerants found in temperature exchange equipment are greenhouse gases. 

Failing to recycle e-waste also means the precious materials contained in tech products can’t be reused. This means more primary raw materials need to be extracted and refined, which leads to an increase in greenhouse gas emissions. 

The UN estimates that 53 million tonnes of e-waste are generated globally every year, based on 2019’s figures. It expects this figure to double by 2050, making it the fastest-growing waste stream in the world. 

However, it is an issue that simply doesn’t get the level of attention that it deserves, and consumer awareness is far lower than it should be: currently, in 2019, globally, only 17.4 per cent of electronic waste was officially documented as formally collected and recycled. 

So, the scale and the urgency of the challenge here is huge. But the good news is that there are solutions and people need to be educated about the problem, then incentivised to act.  

musicMagpie is just one small example of what can be done. Our circular economy model allows people to sell us their unwanted technology products. We then recycle and refurbish the product before selling it or renting it to someone else. 95% of the products we buy from our customers are refurbished and we use the parts from the remaining 5% to refurbish other items. In this way, nearly half a million consumer technology products per year are given a second life, and thousands of tonnes of gadgets are prevented from being disposed of in an environmentally unfriendly manner. 

That’s not a bad starting point, but there is so much more to be done. Our research has found that in the UK alone, households are sitting on £16.5 billion of unused gadgets. Or to put it another way, every UK household estimates it has around £550 worth of consumer technology lying around that is rapidly depreciating. Furthermore, four in five people in the UK don’t know what e-waste is and, when given the definition of e-waste, nearly a third didn’t believe it damaged the environment or were unsure, while 45% weren’t even aware it impacted climate change. 

As the largest recycler of consumer mobile phones in the UK, we’re proud to be playing our part – and our mantra is to be “smart for the consumer and smart for the planet”. We’re also delighted that our strong environmental credentials have been recognised by the London Stock Exchange, who recently awarded us with their Green Economy Mark – which recognises companies that derive 50 per cent or more of their total annual revenues from products and services that contribute to the global Green Economy.  

But we are not complacent, and we are well aware that we are only just scratching the surface – both of the challenge and of the opportunity. Forbes recently estimated that the global re-commerce market is worth $24 billion and will rise to $51 billion by 2023 as consumers become increasingly aware of the impact on the environment and so seek to make more sustainable choices. We are certainly seeing this for ourselves, as the trends towards ethical shopping increase and people are more and more willing to buy refurbished products instead of new ones, whether that be for environmental concerns or simply to save money. 

In fact, the circular economy is now a well-established consumer “mega-trend” as demonstrated by a number of retailers that have established specific “green” brands or recycling schemes for clothes and other household items.  

But we still believe that the pace of change isn’t fast enough, and that more should be done to highlight the issue to consumers and on the global political stage. That’s why we created ‘Mount Recyclemore’ – a giant Mount Rushmore-style sculpture of the G7 leaders’ heads, made entirely of discarded electronics – and erected it on a beach near to Carbis Bay during the G7 summit earlier this year.  

It came about following research from the Global E-waste Monitor which showed that G7 nations alone generated almost 15.9 million tonnes of e-waste a year in 2019, with the US (6.9m), Japan (2.6m), Germany (1.6m) and UK (1.6m) being the worst offenders. The campaign garnered worldwide media attention, and as part of it we were delighted to partner with WasteAid – donating £1 for each piece of consumer tech that was traded in during the month of June. In addition, sellers had the option to donate the value offered by us to the charity. After a brief stint outside our offices in Stockport, the sculpture now stands proudly at the Eden Project in Cornwall where it first met the G7 leaders. 

Our hope is that it will turn heads, spark conversations and prompt people to take action. But in truth, meaningful progress will only be made if e-waste is part of the conversation along with the many other urgent topics that currently lead the climate change debate. 

About the Author 

Steve Oliver is CEO of musicMagpie, a leading re-commerce business in the UK and US specialising in refurbished consumer technology, which he co-founded in 2007 from his garage in Stockport, Greater Manchester.  

Today, musicMagpie has an established presence in the UK, with operations in Stockport, Greater Manchester, and in the US in Atlanta, Georgia. Operating through its two trusted brands - musicMagpie in the UK and Decluttr in the US – the business’s core model is simple: to provide consumers with a smart, sustainable and trusted way to buy, rent and sell refurbished consumer technology and physical media products. 

musicMagpie floated on London Stock Exchange’s AIM market in April 2021, with a valuation of £208m. On admission, the company received the London Stock Exchange’s Green Economy Mark, which recognises companies that derive over 50 percent of their total annual revenue from products and services that contribute to the global ‘Green Economy’. musicMagpie is the biggest ever global seller on eBay, the largest third-party seller on Amazon Marketplace, and employs approx 700 people.

The Gambia’s famous food markets attract tourists and local residents alike. From the sprawling Bakau fish market to the fruit and vegetable stalls at Abuko, the markets dotted around the Greater Banjul Area are an essential part of life in the capital region.

The markets are usually laid out with small shops made of wood and sheet metal – known as canteens – at the front, while inside are the stalls selling meat, fish and vegetables. Much of the produce is grown by women in gardens close by the markets.

But the markets also create tonnes of trash – much of it organic waste which, along with plastic, cardboard, and other rubbish, becomes landfill at the city’s infamous Bakoteh dumpsite.

In an effort to tackle the organic waste problem, WasteAid, a UK-based NGO, in partnership with Kanifing Municipal Council (KMC) & Women’s Initiative The Gambia, has been awarded €100,000 by the EU Global Climate Change Alliance (GCCA+) to pilot an innovative approach to divert organic waste into productive materials.

“The Greater Banjul Area is a coastal environment, so you get problems with toxins leaking from the dumpsite into the water table and the sea,” says Ingrid Henrys, WasteAid Project Coordinator in The Gambia. “In the past they also burned trash there and that caused smoke and pollution problems for local people, as well as the flies from organic waste. Now burning has been banned and a fence has been built around the dumpsite to stop rubbish blowing away, but the problem remains of how to reduce the amount of organic waste being dumped there.”

As a first step, the women gardeners who grow fruit and vegetables to sell in the markets are being taught how to turn organic waste into compost.

“It’s very important to get the women involved, because it’s mostly women who do the small-scale fruit and vegetable growing in the city,” explains Ingrid. “We’re starting with 30 women farmers from two gardens, and the women themselves will choose who takes part in the pilot. After they are trained, they will be able to pass their skills and knowledge onto the others.”

Turning organic waste into compost will enable the women gardeners to reduce their reliance on chemical fertilisers. “When we talked to them, we realised they were spending a serious amount of money on chemicals, but their productivity was going down each year,” says Lamin S. Sanyang, Director of Services at KMC. “If they switch to organic compost it will not only save them money, but it will also be better for soil fertility.”

Ingrid points to another benefit. “We also need to protect the women’s health. Often they use these chemical fertilisers without any protective equipment, and they have no control over what it is or how much they use.”

The Gambia’s waste problem goes back decades. “One of the biggest issues was the lack of vehicles to collect waste,” says Lamin. “There was no proper waste collection, so people just used to dump it in the street and in the rivers, which in turn caused disease and pollution. Some communities resorted to burning the rubbish, which also affected their health. During the rainy season there were flash floods because the drains were blocked up with trash. So we decided to take action, and devised the Mbalit Project – Mbalit is the local name for waste.”

The GCCA+ funded WasteAid programme builds on the Mbalit Project by diverting biodegradable waste away from the dumpsite and turning it into both compost and biochar – a form of charcoal made from biomass – which can be sold for cooking fuel.

“It’s not just the women gardeners who benefit, the market vendors are really happy as well,” adds Lamin. “In the past, the rubbish wasn’t always collected on time and was left to rot. If the waste is properly managed, it will reduce the number of flies.”

It’s early days for the pilot project, which was launched at Abuko market in July – but it’s already created a stir.

“The word has spread very quickly, especially after the official launch,” says Ingrid. “It was covered on the local TV and radio and social media – the training hasn’t started yet but already people are interested in it. The Gambia is a very agricultural economy, producing a lot of organic waste, but most of it goes to the dumpsite when it could be used as compost. Many farmers don’t compost because they don’t know about it, or they think it takes too much time and effort. But the way they farm is really degrading the soil.”

Ingrid’s enthusiasm for nature and the climate is already rubbing off on the women gardeners.

“Wow, this is indeed a great achievement. Our production level will increase,” says Fatou Ceesa*. “We have been working this garden for many decades, but our production levels have remained the same. But with this project, our production will increase, and our lives will be improved. We can now get a good price for our vegetables and continue paying our children’s school fees, as well as paying medical bills.”

“I have a passion for environmental and biodiversity protection, and I am always trying new composting techniques at home,” laughs Ingrid. “I also really love to empower women – so this project really brings it all together!”

*Not her real name, for reasons of confidentiality.

This story was written by Martin Atkin and first published on the GCCA+ website.

An overlooked niche in the energy trade is keeping high-tech waste out of the trash — and helping to connect millions of people to reliable electricity. Bloomberg columnist on emerging markets, technology and waste, Adam Minter, explores. This article first appeared in Bloomberg Opinion and is shared with permission from the author.

A few years ago, I visited a dusty warehouse selling secondhand clothes in Cotonou, Benin. In the back, behind bundles of used Canadian T-shirts, were two pallets of unboxed solar panels. I assumed they were destined for the roof. One of the employees told me otherwise. “Our boss sells them to his customers across the border,” she said, referring to Nigeria. “They use them for water pumps on the farms.” A few minutes later, the boss showed up and told me that he expected secondhand solar would soon be a bigger business than the centuries-old, multibillion-dollar used-clothing trade.

Across the developing world, homeowners, farmers, and businesses are turning to cheap, secondhand solar to fill power gaps left by governments and utilities. To meet that demand, businesses ranging from individual sellers on Facebook Marketplace to specialised brokerages are getting into the trade. Earlier this month, Marubeni Corp., one of Japan’s largest trading houses, announced that it’s establishing a blockchain-based market for such panels. Collectively, these businesses will likely play a crucial role in bringing renewable energy to the world’s emerging markets — and keeping high-tech waste out of the trash.

In 2016, the International Renewable Energy Agency estimated that as much as 78 million tons of solar-panel waste will be generated by 2050. That’s almost certainly an undercount. Over the past decade, falling prices and improved efficiency in newer models have offered a strong incentive to replace solar panels earlier than their intended lifespan. By one estimate, those upgrades could lead to 50 times more waste than the agency has predicted within five years.

In developed countries, recycling — not reuse and resale — tends to be the knee-jerk response to managing such waste. But there are two problems with recycling unwanted solar panels. First, doing so is far costlier than simply landfilling them. Second, waste panels often aren’t waste; they’re just degraded by time in the sun or less efficient than newer models. They may not be good enough for San Francisco homeowners and cutting-edge utilities, but they work perfectly well for anyone in a sunny climate in need of stable, off-grid power who doesn’t want to pay full price.

That’s potentially a huge market. Between 2010 and 2019, the number of people living without electricity declined from 1.2 billion to 759 million worldwide. Some of that gap was closed by new power lines and other transmission facilities. But most of it was achieved by installing small solar systems designed to power a village, farm or even a single home. As of last year, 420 million people got their electricity from off-grid solar systems. By 2030, according to the World Bank, that number could nearly double.

Nobody knows how much of this market has been met by secondhand panels and systems. But the volumes already being sold are tantalizingly large. Laid Sahraoui, founder and managing director of Hong Kong-based R3 Tech, a major broker, “pessimistically” guessed that there are 10 million used solar panels on the global market. Melissa Schmid, of EnergyBin, a Minnesota-based exchange for buyers and sellers of used and overstocked solar equipment, told me that the company markets 1.5 million pieces of photovoltaic equipment on its site. “At points, we have five million.”

The deals pulled from this inventory can be massive. Schmid mentioned a recent shipment of 25 megawatts-worth of panels (weighing as much as 2,000 tons) to Afghanistan from the U.S. For Sahraoui, such deals are common. Last year, he traveled to Texas to buy “hundreds of thousands” of hail-damaged solar panels. Customers for those panels range from Pakistani farmers seeking to pump water for irrigation to Lebanese hoteliers seeking an alternative to the unreliable local grid.

About the author

Adam Minter is a columnist with Bloomberg Opinion, where he writes about emerging markets, technology, waste, and other topics. From 2002 to 2014, he was based in Shanghai, where he covered the trans-Pacific trade in recycling. His first book, “Junkyard Planet: Travels in the Billion Dollar Trash Trade,” is an insider’s look at the world of globalised recycling. His most recent book, “Secondhand: Travels in the New Global Garage Sale” is a deep dive into the secondhand economy that thrives around the world.

by Tom Idle, Innovation Forum

Waste recycling rates are improving overall, but what are the measures that can really drive plastic recycling forwards?

Legislation designed to promote waste recycling appears to be working.

In Europe, the latest data shows that, even with more waste being generated by EU nations, the total amount ending up in landfill continues to fall. Since 1995, 69m tonnes of rubbish – or 57% – less waste has been buried in the ground. Since 2005, landfilling has dropped by almost 4% a year on average.

Member states do seem to have adhered to the EU’s Directive 62/1994, in place since 2001, to ensure all nations recover a minimum of 50% of all packaging put on the market (further revised in 2008 with a 60% recovery target). Directive 31/1999 has also had an impact, which forced EU states to reduce the amount of biodegradable waste going to landfills to 35%.

All of this means more waste being recycled. Since the mid-1990s, the average annual rate of recycling has increased by 4.2% year on year. Now, more than 100m tonnes of waste is recycled annually. While that still only accounts for 47% of all waste, it’s a significant increase on the 19% recycled in 1995.

It is a similar story in the US, which produces more than 260m tonnes of waste a year. Over time, recycling rates have steadily increased – from just 16% in 1990 to a little over 35% in 2017.

Plastic progress

But while overall recycling rates have slowly improved, brands remain under intense pressure to do more, in plastics particularly.

Of course, boosting recycling rates requires action from a range of different stakeholders – among them brands that place products on the market, the local authorities and resource management companies charged with treating waste, and consumers.

But in which part of the chain can the biggest impacts be made?

For Ceris Turner-Bailes, CEO of WasteAid, it starts with properly incentivising the use of recycled materials. She says that products made from materials that are not recyclable because they use mixed materials should be phased out, and incentives created to utilise single-material packaging, which is more easily recycled.

Part of the solution is paying a fair price to the people that collect waste, not just the basic market value of the material, particularly in lower-income countries.And WasteAid is working with waste pickers and training vulnerable and marginalised people to recycle plastics into products such as paving stones and tiles. Turner-Bailes says: “One of the biggest challenges is creating a market for the products in the countries that we work, and this is a big focus for us going forward.”

Joe Franses, VP of sustainability at Coca-Cola European Partners (CCEP) agrees. He wants a step-change in investment of recycled plastic. “Certain sectors need help in securing access to post-consumer feedstock at a viable price,” he says. Currently, the beverage industry is the only sector which is obligated to meet a minimum recycled PET (rPET) percentage threshold. The EU Single-Use Plastic Directive requires a minimum of 25% recycled plastic to be used in beverage bottles by 2025. Franses says that “too much” collected PET currently goes to other applications or is exported once it’s collected for recycling. “More could be done to ensure that PET from beverage packaging that is collected can be recycled bottle-to-bottle.”

Engaging consumers

Making it easier for consumers to engage in the recycling process will also be key to boosting recycling numbers. “Industry-driven” deposit return schemes (DRS) are likely to deliver the highest collection rates for beverage packaging – and help to facilitate bottle-to-bottle recycling, as they reduce contamination, Franses says. But such schemes require strong support from policymakers and governments, as well as effective collaboration, to make them work, with producers and retailers working together. “Norway and Sweden offer best-in-class DRS, with a focus on creating a local, circular system via a strong connection to local recycling partners, such as Veolia.” Franses points out.

Another good example is the SRN (Stichting Retourverpakking Nederland) in the Netherlands, which is a scheme that gives access to feedstock at competitive prices for all those that participate in the scheme.

Deposit return schemes do, of course, have their detractors, particularly where there is near-universal local authority kerbside collection, such as in the UK. Introducing DRS requires development of new infrastructure, with reverse-vending machines installed in public places or retailers being required to devote space to collection and deposit returns.

Another potential downside is that DRS removes PET, which is currently amongst the most valuable recyclate, from kerbside waste streams, taking away that revenue and making the collection of other wastes less financially viable. DRS can create an incentive for increased use of plastic and penalises the use of other materials, notably aluminium, which does not require any venture financing and novel chemistry solutions to improve its recyclability.

Whatever your view, this is a debate that will, no doubt, continue .

Keep it simple

To get the attention of consumers, James Bull, head of packaging at Tesco, says it’s all about simplifying processes. He argues for legislation that drives “consistency in what is used and what is collected” and will make it easier to manage and more straightforward for the general public to engage with.

In fact, making it easier for people to understand how recycling supply chains actually work will give them the confidence and incentive to recycle more, Turner-Bailes says. “There needs to be full transparency in the movement and use of materials across borders, to generate confidence that materials are properly recycled and not dumped.”

WasteAid is currently working in Douala, Cameroon, where the local government is supporting recycling by ordering recycled products on a large scale to improve local infrastructure. “It’s a good example of local government working with commercial enterprises to support recycling efforts on a large scale,” according to Turner-Bailes.

Barriers remain

Closer collaboration and more effective consumer engagement are likely to have a big impact. However, some specific challenges remain. Bull highlights the difficulties in collecting and recycling the soft plastic bags, pouches and films that represent a large proportion of any shopping basket.

The solution? Companies should prove it can be done and influence governments to move quicker and legislate consistently for a set of materials that are to be used to “prevent food waste, provide functionality while limiting carbon and environmental impacts”, Bull says. Then, the sector should “generate demand, engage industry, and influence market investment and cost coverage”.

Franses reinforces the need for greater investment in new recycling technologies and infrastructure, in particular, to boost capacity within the rPET reprocessing sector to generate an increased supply of rPET. Through its innovation and investment arm, CCEP Ventures, the business has recently invested in recycling start-up CuRe Technology. CuRE uses a partial depolymerisation process to break down PET into its component building blocks to produce food-grade rPET – a good fit for CCEP as it aims to deliver 100% rPET for its bottles in the next five years.

Enforced circularity?

The European Commission’s long-awaited Circular Economy Package will have made brands and recyclers sit up and take notice. With revised legislative proposals on waste, a more stringent target for recycling, particularly of packaging waste, and lower limits for landfilling, companies will be forced to think more circular. And that’s a good thing, says Bull. “The best examples of driving positive behaviour are about driving a value into packaging, rather than it being provided as a disposable element.”

Turner-Bailes agrees, arguing that voluntary commitments from brands have been a welcome start, but they have had limited impact. “[They] need to be replaced with legislation and clear timescales for the phase-out of product packaging that is non-recyclable. This will be a strong signal of intent towards the creation of genuinely circular economies.”

The original of this article can be found at: https://www.innovationforum.co.uk/articles/how-to-get-plastic-recycling-to-real-scale