Logitech upped its use of recycled plastic last year, including e-plastics recovered from end-of-life electronics, according to its recently released impact report.
The company also this week announced winners of a technology challenge aiming to recover and use more recycled materials.
In its impact report covering April 2023 through March 2024, Logitech reported using 95,100 tons of material across all products and packaging, of which 30,800 was post-consumer recycled plastic. The company only tracks recycled plastic use, so its company-wide recycled content figure for the year totaled 32%.
The latest recycled resin figure represents an increase of 42% over the prior-year period, when the company used 21,800 tons of recycled resin. Some amount of recycled plastic is now used in 73% of the company’s products, while just four years earlier in the 2020 fiscal year, recycled plastic appeared in just 2% of company products.
“Our capability has grown rapidly through partnerships with resin suppliers and molders to explore and develop new, stronger resins in a range of colors and grades,” the company wrote. “This has expanded our supply chain as well as refining molding processes. Recycled plastic is now used at scale across Logitech, and is contributing meaningfully to our carbon reduction efforts.”
Logitech specified that the recycled plastic used in its products “typically comes from end-of-use consumer electronics, which could have otherwise ended up in landfill.”
Altogether, plastic parts and packaging made up 42% of the weight of material the company used during the year, representing a larger share than the 39% they made up the prior year. That’s partially due to plastic parts making up a larger share and metals parts shrinking substantially: During the latest fiscal year, metals parts made up 5% of the weight of materials, down from 13% the prior year.
Separate from the impact report, on Aug. 26, Logitech announced a handful of companies it is recognizing through its Future Positive technology challenge. The challenge highlights companies innovating in different areas of electronics, including in printed circuit boards, batteries, integrated circuits, overall material use, packaging and supply chain redesign.
The recent winners include Achelous Pure Metal, a Hong Kong-based recycling firm “that recovers lithium-ion batteries and other valuable metals from waste,” and TPIPLASTIC, a Dongguan, China-headquartered “research and development company focused on developing high-quality post-consumer recycled and ocean-bound plastic materials in computer products.”
A version of this story appeared in E-Scrap News on Aug. 29.
