Electronic products at their end-of-life: Options and obstacles

The end-of-life take-back of electronics products offer challenges and opportunities for manufacturers. Firms in the electronics industry need to examine how they will manage end-of-life take-back, because pending regulations will place new responsibilities on different parties. Since product take-back has been worthwhile for firms in the electronic circuit assembly and other industries, it is worthy of consideration by firms even if the threat of legislated take-back subsides. This paper sets out to explain the options for both the collecting and processing of electronics products at their end-of-life and to state the technical and social factors that inhibit or discourage financially rational environmentally conscious disposition of end-of-life product. Generally, it has been found that the solutions with the lowest environmental impact offer the greatest profit potential. The lesser that is done to a product at its end-of-life, the lower the cost of processing. The activity that involves the most processing is converting the product back into raw materials, which is the lowest value form of product recovery. Firms need to encourage policy makers to consider all legislation and regulations that are in place already when product take-back is considered. This is vital since many legislators enjoy promoting take-back, but have not addressed existing regulations that hinder and prevent take-back from being implemented by organizations.