Conversations: Comprenew
As we have been exploring the world of recycling and sustainability, we were interested in learning more about what happens to electronics at the end of their lifecycle. With the recommendation of an expert at the Kent County Recycling and Education Center, we reached out to Comprenew, a company who deals specifically with recycling electronics.
Comprenew is a non-profit company that specializes in the recycling and refurbishing of used electronics. The work force of the company is comprised of both employees and volunteers, who are there every day helping to tear down old electronics by hand. Through our tour and conversation, we learned some insightful information regarding what works and what is not working when it comes to recycling electronics.
Image taken at Comprenew
Image taken at Comprenew
There is a lack of public knowledge
This is something we have observed from our research and past tours. Much of the public population has never learned how to properly recycle, what they should or should not be recycling, or the locations that they should be recycling at. We hope to eventually dive deeper into this topic, but for now please read more information on how to recycle properly at this website.
Michigan has no regulation laws on dumping electronics in the landfill
As technology advances, we see more and more demand for the next new phone, the next new laptop, or the next new flatscreen TV. With this demand for ‘new and better’, there is an overwhelming amount of perfectly good electronics (with a mix of old electronics) being thrown into the trash. Oftentimes, people end up hoarding old electronics because of privacy issues with data on their devices, another issue when it comes to the American consumption lifestyle. With this pile-up, only 15%-20% of electronics are actually being recycled. That means the remainder of those electronics are either being hoarded at home, or thrown into our landfills - creating a huge issue of toxins and unnecessary waste. At Comprenew, their specialized electronics team actually takes usable electronics, wipes them of data, and turns them into new product to sell at their stores.
Disconnect of cost vs. sustainability in large corporations
This is something we have noted from a few of our sustainability conversations. The love of money almost always wins when it comes to sales, when really the focus should be on what is best for the consumer and the planet. With this growing push for sustainability in companies, we have seen some corporations make more of an effort to be eco-friendly, typically by pulling together a sustainability crew or expert who works within the company. Unfortunately, even though this position is important, there is still often a disconnect when it comes to product design, sales, marketing, and fitting that sustainability expert into the mix. It could be very beneficial to companies to teach sustainability to each of these teams or even to hire a sustainability expert for each of these fields! When it comes to taking sustainable action, everyone needs to be working together to succeed.
Good Features of Recyclable Electronics
Although these conversations can tend to lean on the negative side of recycling, there are some great things we learned about how to change the way we are designing products to make them easier to recycle at the end of their life. Here are a few tips we gathered from the team at Comprenew about their idea of a well-designed electronic product:
Easy to open and disassemble
Try not to store Data unless necessary (personal privacy issue)
Purposeful use of plastics
Charge an up-front fee to pay for the recycling cost of that product ahead of time
Make it easy to repair
We immensely enjoyed our visit to Comprenew and we are thankful to have been given the chance to tour the facility and learn more about the actions they are taking as a company to be sustainable. If you have any additional comments or articles to share related to this post, sustainability, or electronics recycling, please share below!