CEA, eCycling Leadership Initiative Reports 460 Million Pounds of CE Products Responsibly Recycled
The Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) recently reported that the consumer electronics (CE) industry dramatically increased its recycling in 2011, advancing the goals set by the eCycling Leadership Initiative.
The First Annual Report of the eCycling Leadership Initiative, revealed the following achievements:
- Participants of the eCycling Leadership Initiative arranged for the responsible recycling of 460 million pounds of consumer electronics, a 53 percent increase over the 300 million pounds recycled in 2010.
- Electronics manufacturers and retailers increased the number of recycling drop-off locations for consumers nationwide to nearly 7,500 from just over 5,000 a year ago.
- By the end of 2011, 96 percent of the recycling done by eCycling Leadership Initiative participants was conducted in third-party certified recycling facilities.
- CEA launched GreenerGadgets.org to educate consumers about eCycling and energy consumption. By entering a ZIP code, anyone can locate the closest responsible recycling opportunity sponsored by the CE industry and/or third-party certified recycler.
“In the first year of the eCycling Leadership Initiative, our industry has made significant progress toward its goals due to the hard work of our member companies,” said Gary Shapiro, President and CEO of CEA. “We continue to push for a national solution to eCycling that will eliminate the costly and confusing patchwork of state regulations.”
Spearheaded by CEA, the eCycling Leadership Initiative, which is also known as the Billion Pound Challenge, represents a collaboration among consumer electronics manufacturers, retailers, collectors, recyclers, non-governmental organizations and governments at all levels. The initiative has set the goals of increasing the amount of electronics recycled responsibly to a billion pounds annually by 2016, growing the number of collection opportunities available to consumers, improving consumer awareness of available eCycling collection sites and providing transparent metrics on eCycling efforts.
Recycling one billion pounds of electronics by 2016 would be a more than threefold increase over 2010. One billion pounds of electronics not properly recycled would fill about 88.9 million cubic feet, equivalent to an entire 71,000-seat NFL stadium.
“According to CEA research, the average U.S. household owns 25 different CE products,” said Walter Alcorn, CEA’s vice president of environmental affairs and industry sustainability. “We want to make recycling electronics just as easy as purchasing electronics.”
For the more details on the eCycling Leadership Initiative, including a full list of participating companies, please see the First Annual Report of the eCycling Leadership Initiative and video.