By: Will Herman, Manufacturing Team Lead
The Tech sector is nothing if not innovative. The pace of development is such that tomorrow’s world seems closer than ever while yesterday’s products will seem, to some at least, to be woefully out of date. It’s one of the sector’s strengths, presenting challenges as well as opportunities for brands, and greater choice than ever for consumers. But is it possible to choose Tech and simultaneously make a positive choice for the environment?
The growing e-waste crisis
CNN reported in 2024 that global electronic waste had reached record highs and was growing five times faster than rates of recycling. But as anyone familiar with the waste hierarchy will quickly point out, recycling sits beneath reuse. It’s a fact which has not been lost on the growing number of brands and retailers offering trade-in discounts. It’s a ‘win, win’. The consumer can cash in on their ‘old’ Tech, get a discount on their next purchase and make that positive choice for the environment. Meanwhile, the brand or retailer can add yet another tactic to its marketing programme and further improve its environmental performance.
Recycling: a key solution to e-waste challenges
It's also a powerful story in any brand’s armoury. With the gap between e-waste generation and recycling continuing to grow, those delivering trade-in schemes can respond to growing environmental concern, helping consumers to make informed, environmentally responsible purchasing decisions. Happily, for those offering these schemes, the net result is likely to be greater consumer engagement, brand loyalty, and sales – no less than 58% of global consumers said that their purchasing decision for a mobile phone hinges on price.
There can be no doubt that significant action is required to tackle the challenges posed by end-of-life e-waste, including investment in recycling infrastructure. But it is worth noting that recycling metals from e-waste, instead of extracting new raw materials, avoided approximately 52m metric tons of planet-warming emissions in 2022, according to the United Nations Global E-waste Monitor. Meanwhile, for EU Member States, the forthcoming EU Circular Economy Act is set to unify circular economy policies and prioritise sustainable access to critical raw materials, while clear criteria have already been developed with regard to product design for recyclability.
For the packaging industry for instance, stricter recyclability measures were endorsed by the formal adoption of the Packaging & Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR) voted by the European Parliament (EP) in April 2024. This establishment of design for recycling criteria and the introduction of a performance grading system is an essential measure to ensure materials are designed for recycling, but also to ensure they are effectively collected, sorted, and recycled at scale.
Similar measures are critical for all sectors, to ensure critical raw materials are kept in a closed material loop, reducing dependency on virgin materials.
The success of trade-in programs
To put the benefits of trade-in schemes into context, companies such as Assurant, exemplify the measurable impact of trade-in and upgrade programmes. As of November 2021, its initiatives had redirected 20,412 metric tons of e-waste from landfills, repurposed 100 million mobile devices and offset CO2 emissions for 5.5 million metric tons. These figures show just how important trade-in offers are for global sustainability.
Today, trade-in programmes are an enabler for brand differentiation and help to create a compelling value proposition. It’s an approach which helps to establish an environmentally responsible position, but which also opens new avenues for storytelling, enabling a brand to foster greater consumer engagement.