Key takeaways

  • E-waste collection schemes offer companies a low-cost strategy for gathering items for recycling and refurbishing.
  • Evolving this activity into profit generation means that recycling costs are offset and product lifecycles are prolonged.
  • Digitalisation reduces the need for certain products, bringing the e-waste impact closer to zero.

Focus on small scale with a big impact

Repurpose and recycle

Just 12% of e-waste in Asia is recycled despite 18 countries enacting a national e-waste policy, legislation or regulation.3

Part of this slowness is due to the cost of recycling e-waste, both the cost to recycle and the environmental impact of additional processing. However, companies that break down this cost forecast over the entire product lifecycle often find that the cost of producing the same item new far outweighs the cost of recycling. 

Redefining recycling as a potential profit source rather than a sunk cost also creates new revenue opportunities for companies willing to engage in refurbishing or recycling devices. A notable success story in Singapore is Reebelo, a sustainable tech marketplace that launched in 2019 and reported a six-fold revenue increase by its third year of operation.4 The company has already removed 5 tonnes of e-waste from circulation and aims to create an entirely circular economy for technology.

Another company finding success from this strategy is the Carousell Group, a marketplace that partners with large-scale companies to create e-commerce channels for refurbished and recycled items that would otherwise become e-waste. The company is expanding its focus from small devices to larger items such as e-bikes.5

These buy-back, e-waste collection and reselling schemes offer companies a second revenue stream for once-paid-for items as well as increasing the product's value by prolonging its lifecycle.

Digitalisation over consumption

Reduction for impact, removal for scale

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