Electronics Recycling Asia: This year’s models

As the stream of end-of-life computers, televisions and cell phones grows exponentially in Asia, governments in that part of the world are starting to set up networks designed to ensure the best recycling outcome for such devices.

An overview of China’s vast new system was given at the Electronics Recycling Asia conference, held in Singapore in mid-November, as was the announcement of an electronics recycling standard in host nation Singapore.

Ronnie Tay of Singapore’s National Environment Agency (NEA), said Singapore’s new SS587 standard has been designed to help ensure the nation properly handles the estimated 60,000 metric tons of electronic scrap it generates each year.

Tay said the new system takes into account the value of these items. “There is enormous potential for resources to be recovered [so] well-designed systems have to be put in place for collection and processing” of e-scrap, he stated.

The SS587 standard can be adopted by all corporate generators and collectors of electronic scrap. At the forum, two companies who have complete compliance with SS587 through a pilot program—packaging firm GreenPac and Solvay Specialty Chemicals—were honored with plaques received from Tay.

China, with some 1.3 billion people and an economy that has converted from agrarian to industrial and commercial in just three decades, enacted a nationwide obsolete electronics recycling system that started in 2012.

According to Professor Li Jinhui of Tsinghua University, Beijing, the precious metals content in items such as printed circuit boards and cell phones can cause “flows to the informal sector,” but that China’s new system of 106 licensed facilities means that most scrap is now “treated by the formal sector.”

Professor Li said China’s licensed recyclers can benefit from additional technology transfer from Europe and other parts of the world. Although, this process is encouraged within China’s current five-year economic plan, it is being hindered by perceptions of inadequate protections of intellectual property in that nation. China’s formal electronics recyclers also could benefit from offshore training methods, said Li.

Even without full access to global technology, the 106 licensed facilities in China generally have adequate dismantling, shredding and materials separation technology, Li indicated. Recyclers and government officials, however, are still trying to determine the correct subsidy figures to help ensure end-of-life items flow into the formal network rather than informal and possibly unsafe locations.

Electronics Recycling Asia was organized by Switzerland-based ICM AG and held at the Shangri-La Hotel Singapore Nov. 11-14.