Dell experienced a year-over-year decline in e-scrap collections last year, but the company still expects to achieve its goal of taking back 1 million tons of electronics by 2020.
That’s according to the company’s 2015 corporate social responsibility report, which covered the period from February 2014 through January 2015.
Dell collected 86,310 tons of e-scrap during fiscal year 2015, a 25 percent decrease from the weight collected the year before. To date, the company has collected a total of 708,235 tons since 2008.
“Because devices continue to get smaller and lighter, we see a decrease in volume, but our units are still higher year-over-year,” Dell spokeswoman Carly Tatum told E-Scrap News. “We anticipated this industry shift when we created our 2020 goal, and we are still on track to meet our goal of collecting 2 billion pounds by 2020. Beyond 2020, we have discussed shifting to highlight units in addition to volumes.”
In 2015, the company concentrated efforts on expanding collection networks and services, supporting the creation of take-back programs in developing countries and launching a “closed-loop” recycling initiative, the report states.
In 2015, Dell expanded the consumer take-back program to 42 service centers in China (up from 10 locations) and 18 in India (up from 16 locations). In India, it also launched a program through which consumers can return any brand of computer or monitor in working or non-working condition to one of 49 Dell stores in 12 cities to receive a credit toward a new model.
Dell, which has e-scrap collection programs accepting all brands of electronics in 78 countries, said in the report lack of regulation is an ongoing issue in developing countries.
“Without any guidelines, many local recyclers will only take back materials they can readily sell and then either incinerate or dump any electronics products’ remaining components,” the report stated.
In 2015, the OEM worked with Uganda on developing take-back legislation, something it had previously done in Kenya.
In fiscal year 2015, the company shipped its first UL Environment-certified PC, which uses a resin made of 35 percent recycled plastics from recycled computers. The company refers to this as a closed-loop system. By the end of the year, it was shipping 16 displays and three desktop systems containing plastics recycled from computers, the report showed.