The Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), Arlington, Virginia, has announced that 660 million pounds of obsolete electronics were collected for recycling in the United States last year, a new milestone for consumer electronics recycling under the organization’s eCycling Leadership Initiative (ELI). According to the CEA, the total amount of electronics collected in 2014 is the highest total ever collected.
The figures for the year were released as part of the CEA’s "Fourth Annual Report of the eCycling Leadership Institute."
“Since the first year of the eCycling Leadership Initiative (ELI), we’ve continued to see strong gains in the amount of electronics recycled and resources available for consumers to recycle their old devices,” says Gary Shapiro, CEA president and CEO. “Never before have consumers had this kind of access and awareness to recycling resources. With this initiative, we want to make it as easy for people to recycle their old electronics as it is to purchase new ones.”
ELI’s annual recycling total increased by more than 6 percent in 2014, which is 40 million pounds greater the 2013 level (620 million pounds) and more than double the amount recycled before the Initiative’s inception in 2010 (300 million pounds).
The report also disclosed the following achievements:
- More than 8,500 responsible recycling locations are now available to consumers throughout the United States;
- By the end of 2014, nearly all (99.9 percent) of the recycling facilitated by ELI participants was conducted in third-party certified recycling facilities;
- In partnership with Young Minds Inspired, CEA produced and distributed school curriculum programs on eCycling in English and Spanish for fourth, fifth and sixth grade classes.
“According to CEA research, the average U.S. household owns roughly 28 different CE devices,” says Walter Alcorn, CEA vice president of environmental affairs and industry sustainability. “And thanks to the rapid pace of innovation, our electronics devices are becoming lighter than ever. So even as we see continued increases in the total weight of CE recycled—about 6 percent more than last year’s total—we are continuing to recycle an even greater percentage of CE than in years past.”
At its onset, the initiative set the goals of annually increasing the amount of electronics recycled responsibly, growing the number of collection opportunities available to consumers, improving consumer awareness of available electronics recycling collection sites and providing transparent metrics on recycling efforts. The release of the "Fourth Annual Report of the eCycling Leadership Initiative" is part of tracking those metrics.
Consumers in search of an electronics recycler can visit www.GreenerGadgets.org, a CEA resource.