What Is Inside The Future For Electronics Recycling?

Electronics recycling within the U.S. is growing as the sector consolidates and matures. The future of electronics recycling - at the very least inside the U.S., and perhaps globally - will be driven by electronics technologies, precious metals, and market structure, in particular. While you'll find other items that could influence the industry - for instance customer electronics collections, legislation and regulations and export challenges - I believe that these 3 components may have a more profound impact around the future of electronics recycling.

Essentially the most current information on the business - from a survey performed by the International Data Corporation (IDC) and sponsored by the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries (ISRI) - identified that the business (in 2010) handled approximately 3.5 million tons of electronics with revenues of $5 billion and straight employed 30,000 men and women - and that it has been increasing at about 20% annually for the past decade. But will this development continue?

Electronics Technology Individual personal computer gear has dominated volumes handled by the electronics recycling business. The IDC study reported that over 60% by weight of business input volumes was "computer equipment" (which includes PCs and monitors). But recent 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 exceed that of PCs. About 1 billion wise phones is going to 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 increasing quickly. So, we are entering the "Post-PC Era".

In addition, CRT TVs and monitors have been a considerable portion of your input volumes (by weight) inside the recycling stream - up to 75% in the "consumer electronics" stream. As well as the demise in the CRT implies that fewer CRT TVs and monitors will probably be entering the recycling stream - replaced by smaller/lighter flat screens.

So, what do these technology trends mean to the electronics recycling market? Do these advances in technologies, which result in size reduction, result within a "smaller materials footprint" and significantly less total volume (by weight)? Because mobile devices (e.g., clever phones, tablets) currently represent larger volumes than PCs - and likely turn more than more rapidly - they'll likely dominate the future volumes entering the recycling stream. And they may be not simply considerably smaller, but ordinarily price significantly less than PCs. And, conventional laptops are getting replaced by ultra-books together with tablets - which means that the laptop equivalent is actually a lot smaller and weighs significantly less.

So, even with continually rising quantities of electronics, the weight volume entering the recycling stream could begin decreasing. Common desktop computer system processors weigh 15-20 lbs. Standard laptop computers weigh 5-7 lbs. But the new "ultra-books" weigh 3-4 lbs. So, if "computers" (including monitors) have comprised about 60% of the total market input volume by weight and TVs have comprised a big portion from the volume of "consumer electronics" (about 15% of the sector input volume) - then as much as 75% of the input volume can be subject towards the weight reduction of new technologies - maybe as significantly as a 50% reduction. And, related technologies alter and size reduction is occurring in other markets - e.g., telecommunications, industrial, healthcare, and so forth.

However, the inherent worth of those devices can be larger than PCs and CRTs (for resale as well as scrap - per unit weight). So, market weight volumes may possibly decrease, but revenues could continue to enhance (with resale, components recovery value and solutions). And, because mobile devices are anticipated to turn over much more rapidly than PCs (which have generally turned more than in 3-5 years), these changes inside the electronics recycling stream may perhaps happen inside five years or less.

Yet another issue for the market to consider, as recently reported by E-Scrap News - "The overall portability trend in computing devices, which includes conventional form-factors, is characterized by integrated batteries, components and non-repairable parts. With repair and refurbishment increasingly tough for these kinds of devices, e-scrap processors will face important challenges in figuring out the top technique to handle these devices responsibly, as they gradually compose an growing share with the end-of-life management stream." So, does that mean that the resale possible for these smaller sized devices could possibly be much less?

The electronics recycling market has traditionally focused on PCs and customer electronics, but what about infrastructure gear? - like servers/data centers/cloud computing, telecom systems, cable network systems, satellite/navigation systems, defense/military systems. These sectors normally use bigger, higher worth equipment and have significant (and developing?) volumes. They're not normally visible or believed of when considering the electronics recycling industry, but may be an increasingly essential and larger share of your volumes that it handles. And a few, if not substantially, of this infrastructure is as a consequence of modify in technology - which will outcome in a big volume turnover of gear. GreenBiz.com reports that "... because the sector overhauls and replaces... servers, storage and networking gear to accommodate massive 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 in the consumer to the information center... While the amount of customer devices is increasing, they may be also finding smaller sized in size. Meanwhile, information centers are becoming upgraded and expanded, potentially producing a sizable amount of future e-waste."

But, outdoors the U.S. - and in creating countries in unique - the input volume weight towards the electronics recycling stream will raise drastically - because the usage of electronic devices spreads to a broader market and an infrastructure for recycling is developed. Furthermore, establishing nations will continue to become appealing markets for the resale of used electronics.

Valuable Metals Within the IDC study, more than 75% by weight of industry output volumes was identified to be "commodity grade scrap". And much more than half of that was "metals". Precious metals represent a little portion with the volume - the typical concentration of valuable metals in electronics scrap is measured in grams per ton. But their recovery value can be a considerable portion on the total value of commodity grade scrap from electronics.

Valuable metals costs have elevated substantially in recent years. The marketplace rates for gold, silver, palladium and platinum have each and every a lot more than doubled more than the previous five years. Having said that, gold and silver have historically been extremely volatile given that their costs are driven mainly by investors. Their prices look to have peaked - and are now considerably under their high points last year. Whereas, platinum and palladium rates have traditionally been driven by demand (e.g., manufacturing - like electronics and automotive applications) and commonly additional stable.

Telecommunications gear and cell phones commonly possess the highest precious metals content material - as much as 10 times the typical of scrap electronics depending on per unit weight. As technologies advances, the precious metals content of electronics gear typically decreases - on account of cost reduction mastering. Nonetheless, the smaller sized, newer devices (e.g., intelligent phones, tablets) have greater valuable metals content per unit weight than traditional electronics equipment - which include PCs. So, in the event the weight volume of electronics equipment handled by the electronics industry decreases, along with the marketplace costs for precious metals decreases - or at the very least doesn't increase - will the recovery value of precious metals from electronics scrap decrease? Probably the recovery value of valuable metals from electronics scrap per unit weight will raise due to the fact extra electronics products are receiving smaller/lighter, but have a larger concentration of precious metals (e.g., cell phones) than regular e-scrap in total. So, this aspect in the business might in fact become much more expense effective. However the total industry income from commodity scrap - and specially valuable metals - may not continue to boost.

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