5 experts on how trade and investment can facilitate circular electronics

Demand for electronics is anticipated to balloon in the coming decades, owing to both the digital and net-zero transformations. E-waste is already the fastest growing waste category globally, yet only 17% was formally collected and recycled in 2022, with gaping regional disparities. The rest, dumped in landfills or burned in unsanitary conditions, directly contributes to environmental pollution, human health hazards and climate change, through emissions of carbon dioxide, methane and other noxious GHGs due to improper disassembly, incineration, or storage in landfill.

In contrast, properly recycled e-waste offers an energy efficient source of raw materials, including copper, lithium, nickel and gold, which are now vital for the energy transition. Similarly, refurbished, reused and remanufactured electronics can reduce virgin material extraction and emissions from production. Coordinated global action to extend the lifecycle and improve end-of-life treatment of electronics is thus imperative for both the environment and the economy.

The electronics sector is one of the most globalised, with substantial dependencies on international trade and global value chains. Yet, the sophisticated web of electronics value chains globally has not translated into an effective conduit for circularity and reverse supply chains, in large part due to regulatory challenges, lack of access to capital and ill-implemented trade restrictions.

Safe circular electronics trade remains essential to enhance refurbishment, remanufacturing and recycling and to avoid landfill and improper end-of-life treatment. An effective international control system should advance such trade in a responsible and legitimate manner, while preventing malfeasance such as the dumping of waste in countries with inadequate waste management infrastructure.

Five thought leaders from the World Economic Forum’s Circular Trade Community share how trade and investment can play a constructive role in circular electronics.

Jack Barrie, Senior Research Fellow – Circular Economy, Chatham House

“Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) and Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) can significantly boost circular electronics by facilitating cross-border collaboration, reducing tariffs on remanufactured electronic goods, and enabling the seamless movement of electronic components for recycling and repair. These agreements can harmonize standards for e-waste management, promote investment in circular technologies and infrastructure, and encourage innovation in sustainable electronics design. They can support the exchange of best practices and capacity-building between nations, helping to scale up circular economy initiatives. Additionally, FTAs and EPAs can also help streamline Basel Convention procedures, for example through electronic prior informed consent, making the transboundary movement of e-waste more efficient and environmentally sound.”

Mary de Wysocki, SVP and Chief Sustainability Officer, Cisco

“Recovering e-waste is critical to reaching a circular economy. At Cisco, when we recapture valuable equipment that can be remanufactured, or harvest components and raw materials, we can decrease the need for virgin materials. When we think about the transboundary movement of e-waste, we have an opportunity to increase efficiency and reduce processing time through digitization. The ‘Prior Informed Consent’, or PIC, procedure that will govern all e-waste trade effective on 1 January 2025, was created in the 1980s and is inefficient. It is past time to modernize the PIC process and bring it into the 21^st century. Digitization has permeated nearly every aspect of our society – from medical records to school curriculum to commerce. By similarly streamlining the PIC process and making it electronic, we can reduce bottlenecks to recovering e-waste and advancing circularity.”

Alvin Piadasa, Group Sustainability Director, SK Tes

“Reuse and end-of-life treatment is a ruthlessly scale- and capital-intensive industry – for operations to be profitable with a high regard for environmental requirements, facilities need to process large volumes. In reality, not all countries produce enough feedstock to justify setting up viable recycling units, covering all parts of the process including reuse, repair, refurbishment and recovery. Safe international trade is thus necessary to amass the required scale and run profitable end-to-end recovery plants. Current regulations and cumbersome compliance requirements stifle cross-border movement of electronic assets and end-of-life feedstock, and diminished import volumes constrain companies like ours to only be able to invest in mechanical facilities to treat local manufacturing scrap for our global OEM (original equipment manufacturer) clients who would value closed loop solutions."

"More sophisticated circular facilities with pyrolysis and hydrometallurgical lines to recover precious metals or plastics would substantially enhance a closed loop electronics value chain. However, with the present trade restrictions and lax enforcement practices, investment in environmentally sound facilities is not viable, dampening the will to set up regional hubs to repair, refurbish and recycle devices stifling the propagation of technical skills and green employment in developing countries.”

Ken Haig, Head, Energy and Environmental Policy, Asia-Pacific and Japan, AWS

“AWS is embracing three circular economy principles for our server racks by designing for reusability, keeping equipment operating efficiently, and recovering value from securely decommissioned equipment through reuse, repair, and recycling. This allows AWS to keep resources at their highest value for as long as possible, avoiding waste generation from our global operations and reducing the use of raw materials and carbon emissions across our supply chain. This is also why we support efforts by the Information Technology Industry Council (ITI) and industry partners to build capacity for greater reuse opportunities for all.”

Kimberley Botwright, Head, Sustainable Trade, World Economic Forum

“It is important for governments to control waste trade to avoid it ending up where it can’t be properly treated. The Basel Convention offers an excellent global coordination mechanism. More efforts are needed to ensure its efficient implementation. There may be cases, however, where a group of governments want to streamline waste trade controls – particularly for recycling. After all, waste like batteries or plastics contain materials that can be safely put back into production, if responsible processes are used. Demand for such arrangements could increase as circular business models offer solutions to resource resilience, biodiversity and climate impacts."

“Governments with existing close economic relationships, typically within the same region, could establish trusted trader systems – where a trader moving waste across borders is audited against agreed standards and benefits from streamlined border processes. Governments could agree, at a global level, to a template for such arrangements, to avoid proliferation of diverse trusted recycler trade systems, and to ensure these do not create loopholes in the global waste trade control system.”