The throwaway model of consumption is creating a tsunami of e-waste.  But telecommunications provider Vodafone has a plan for that e-waste: reuse, resell, or recycle 100% of it to support the transition toward a more circular economy.

E-waste is the world’s fastest-growing waste stream, according to the United Nations (UN). While it would be easy to point blame at post-consumerism, the issue encompasses the full lifecycle of devices.

“It is critical that not only manufacturers, but also retailers, suppliers and individual consumers play their part in improving the prospects for circular economies,” writes Joakim Reiter, external affairs director for Vodafone Group, in an E-Waste Day blog post.

Fueled mainly by higher consumption rates of electronic equipment, short lifecycles, and few options for repair, the world produced approximately 53.6 million tons of e-waste in 2019, up 21% in just five years, according to a recent UN report. The UN predicts that this will reach 74 million tons by 2030, almost a doubling in five years.

Only 17.4% of 2019’s e-waste was collected and recycled. This means massive amounts of gold, silver, copper, platinum, and other high-value, recoverable materials and electronics were mostly dumped or burned rather than being collected for treatment and reuse.

A report from the Platform for Accelerating the Circular Economy (PACE) and the United Nations E-Waste Coalition found that society only deals with 20% of e-waste appropriately. The remaining 80% ends up in landfills or is shipped off to developing countries that lack the capacity to reject imports or can appropriately handle hazardous materials. Consequently, not only are workers exposed to hazardous and carcinogenic substances present in e-waste such as mercury, lead, and cadmium, its presence in landfills contaminates soil and groundwater, putting food supply systems and water sources at risk.

Despite the doom and gloom of past performances and projections, the global e-waste problem is also a golden opportunity as the UN’s recent report estimates the e-waste recycling market is worth around $57 billion.

Vodafone is making moves to capitalize on that market opportunity. During its 2020 fiscal year, the vendor said it recovered and recycled nearly 85% of the estimated 9,500 tons of waste it generated. And across its entire portfolio of operations, the company claims to reused, resold, or recycled nearly all of its network waste.

Some of that success stems from the company’s internal asset marketplace that it launched in January. The centrally managed process maps supply against demand to repurpose excess stock and decommissioned equipment between markets. “We take waste management seriously – making sure we reuse or recycle unwanted equipment, safely and responsibly,” Reiter wrote.

Vodafone is also working on ways to improve the reuse and repair of its devices. To encourage customers to repair or return their old devices and routers, the company has deployed collection, trade-in, and device buyback schemes across all of its markets. Reuse, resell, and recycle also includes repairing and refurbishing fixed-line routers to extend their useful life multiple times over.

“At the heart of the issue is a lack of public awareness, preventing countries from developing circular economies for electronic equipment – a model where resources are reused and recovered rather than disposed of at the end of life,” Reiter explained.

Reiter noted that public awareness is at the heart of the global e-waste issue. Recycling waste is easy enough when specified plastic, paper, and glass bins have pictures to illustrate the dos and don’ts of content disposal, but that simplicity has yet to find its way into the tech sector.

“We believe that there is more we can do as a company and as an industry to reduce e-waste from mobile technology – through repair, reuse and recycling,” he wrote “Over the coming months, we hope to announce more initiatives that will help us achieve our purpose of halving our overall environmental impact by 2025.”