Closing the Loop: UPS’s E-Waste Disposal Supply Chain

The ever-growing amount of e-waste generated by our increasingly computer-driven, network-connected societies poses significant economic and product design challenges, as well as environmental and health problems, in countries the world over.

The US Environmental Protection Agency reported that electronics, or e-waste, is among the fastest growing components of municipal solid waste streams, accounting for around 2% of them at present. Some 157 million computer products and 126 million cell phones were discarded in the US in 2007, according to the EPA.

Since 2000, air freight and logistics industry giant UPS has been tackling the issue by closing the “production-consumption-disposal” loop and building an e-waste disposal supply chain. More than 25 million pounds of e-waste have been processed since the program’s start in 2000, with the annual average falling between 2 million and 3 million pounds, Robert Gamer, UPS’s e-waste coordinator, told Triple Pundit.

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Source: http://www.TriplePundit.com:
Closing the Loop: UPS’s E-Waste Disposal Supply Chain