What Is Inside The Future For Electronics Recycling?

Electronics recycling within the U.S. is increasing because the business consolidates and matures. The future of electronics recycling - no less than inside the U.S., and possibly globally - might be driven by electronics technology, precious metals, and industry structure, in particular. Despite the fact that you will discover other issues which will influence the industry - for example customer electronics collections, legislation and regulations and export challenges - I think that these three elements may have a additional profound effect on the future of electronics recycling.

The most recent data around the business - from a survey performed by the International Information Corporation (IDC) and sponsored by the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries (ISRI) - located that the sector (in 2010) handled roughly 3.5 million tons of electronics with revenues of $5 billion and straight employed 30,000 individuals - and that it has been increasing at about 20% annually for the past decade. But will this growth continue?

Electronics Technologies Individual computer system gear has dominated volumes handled by the electronics recycling sector. The IDC study reported that over 60% by weight of sector input volumes was "computer equipment" (including PCs and monitors). But current reports by IDC and Gartner show that shipments of desktop and laptop computer systems have declined by more than 10% and that the shipments of smartphones and tablets now each and every exceed that of PCs. About 1 billion sensible phones will be shipped in 2013 - and for the initial time exceed the volumes of conventional cell phones. And shipments of ultra-light laptops and laptop-tablet hybrids are growing quickly. So, we are getting into the "Post-PC Era".

Furthermore, CRT TVs and monitors happen to be a important portion with the input volumes (by weight) inside the recycling stream - as much as 75% in the "consumer electronics" stream. As well as the demise in the CRT implies that fewer CRT TVs and monitors is going to be getting into the recycling stream - replaced by smaller/lighter flat screens.

So, what do these technologies trends mean to the electronics recycling industry? Do these advances in technologies, which bring about size reduction, result within a "smaller materials footprint" and much less total volume (by weight)? Due to the fact mobile devices (e.g., clever phones, tablets) currently represent larger volumes than PCs - and probably turn over more quickly - they will possibly dominate the future volumes getting into the recycling stream. And they're not just considerably smaller sized, but ordinarily cost significantly less than PCs. And, conventional laptops are getting replaced by ultra-books along with tablets - which implies that the laptop equivalent is often a lot smaller sized and weighs much less.

So, even with continually rising quantities of electronics, the weight volume getting into the recycling stream may perhaps commence decreasing. Typical desktop computer system processors weigh 15-20 lbs. Conventional laptop computers weigh 5-7 lbs. However the new "ultra-books" weigh 3-4 lbs. So, if "computers" (like monitors) have comprised about 60% of your total sector input volume by weight and TVs have comprised a big portion with the volume of "consumer electronics" (about 15% in the industry input volume) - then as much as 75% in the input volume might be topic to the weight reduction of new technologies - perhaps as significantly as a 50% reduction. And, similar technology transform and size reduction is occurring in other markets - e.g., telecommunications, industrial, healthcare, and so forth.

However, the inherent worth of those devices may very well be larger than PCs and CRTs (for resale along with scrap - per unit weight). So, industry weight volumes could reduce, but revenues could continue to raise (with resale, components recovery worth and services). And, considering the fact that mobile devices are anticipated to turn more than more swiftly than PCs (which have usually turned over in 3-5 years), these alterations inside the electronics recycling stream could occur inside 5 years or less.

A further factor for the market to think about, as recently reported by E-Scrap News - "The overall portability trend in computing devices, which includes standard form-factors, is characterized by integrated batteries, elements and non-repairable parts. With repair and refurbishment increasingly complicated for these types of devices, e-scrap processors will face substantial challenges in determining the most beneficial strategy to handle these devices responsibly, as they steadily compose an escalating share from the end-of-life management stream." So, does that mean that the resale potential for these smaller sized devices might be less?

The electronics recycling market has traditionally focused on PCs and consumer electronics, but what about infrastructure gear? - such as servers/data centers/cloud computing, telecom systems, cable network systems, satellite/navigation systems, defense/military systems. These sectors typically use bigger, greater worth equipment and have substantial (and expanding?) volumes. They may be not typically visible or believed of when thinking about the electronics recycling sector, but could possibly be an increasingly essential and larger share of the volumes that it handles. And a few, if not a great deal, of this infrastructure is as a consequence of change in technology - that will outcome within a large volume turnover of equipment. GreenBiz.com reports that "... because the business overhauls and replaces... servers, storage and networking gear to accommodate huge consolidation and virtualization projects and prepare for the age of cloud computing... the build-out of cloud computing, the inventory of physical IT assets will shift from the customer to the information center... Although the number of customer devices is escalating, they're also getting smaller in size. Meanwhile, information centers are getting upgraded and expanded, potentially producing a big amount of future e-waste."

But, outside the U.S. - and in building countries in specific - the input volume weight to the electronics recycling stream will enhance drastically - as the usage of electronic devices spreads to a broader industry and an infrastructure for recycling is created. Moreover, building countries will continue to become attractive markets for the resale of utilised electronics.

Valuable Metals In the IDC study, over 75% by weight of industry output volumes was discovered to become "commodity grade scrap". And more than half of that was "metals". Valuable metals represent a compact portion in the volume - the average concentration of valuable metals in electronics scrap is measured in grams per ton. But their recovery worth is actually a substantial portion of the total value of commodity grade scrap from electronics.

Valuable metals costs have elevated substantially in current years. The marketplace costs for gold, silver, palladium and platinum have every single far more than doubled over the previous 5 years. Having said that, gold and silver have historically been extremely volatile since their rates are driven mainly by investors. Their costs appear to have peaked - and are now drastically beneath their higher points last year. Whereas, platinum and palladium prices have traditionally been driven by demand (e.g., manufacturing - like electronics and automotive applications) and normally additional stable.

Telecommunications equipment and cell phones normally have the highest precious metals content material - as much as 10 instances the typical of scrap electronics determined by per unit weight. As technology advances, the valuable metals content material of electronics equipment commonly decreases - resulting from price reduction studying. Having said that, the smaller, newer devices (e.g., smart phones, tablets) have larger precious metals content material per unit weight than traditional electronics gear - like PCs. So, if the weight volume of electronics gear handled by the electronics sector decreases, as well as the marketplace costs for precious metals decreases - or at the least does not raise - will the recovery value of valuable metals from electronics scrap reduce? In all probability the recovery value of precious metals from electronics scrap per unit weight will boost considering that far more electronics merchandise are receiving smaller/lighter, but possess a larger concentration of valuable metals (e.g., cell phones) than regular e-scrap in total. So, this aspect with the business could truly turn out to be a lot more price effective. But the total industry revenue from commodity scrap - and specially valuable metals - might not continue to improve.

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