U.S. issues with transboundary movement of plastic waste for recycling Recently we reported that the Parties to the Basel Convention (187 countries) adopted an amendment to its annexes, governing the transboundary movement of plastic waste as a method to combat the issue of plastic marine litter. This amendment takes effect in January 2021 and controls most plastic scrap and waste as hazardous under the Convention, obligating Basel Parties to seek and obtain prior approval for shipping plastic waste for recycling to other countries. The Basel Convention in general, poses problems for U.S. comp ..read more

Written By: Patricia Whiting, Sr. International Policy Analyst for Sims Lifecycle Services Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Secretariat of the Basel Convention* recently announced that the Bureau of the Basel Open-Ended Working Group (OEWG) determined it not feasible to organize the upcoming face-to-face meeting June 22-25, 2020 in Geneva, Switzerland. Rather, the Bureau has decided the meeting will be conducted “by electronic means”.  This will be historically the first time a Basel OEWG will be organized in a virtual setting, and this decision raised several issues and questions among ..read more

The 21st edition of the International Electronics Recycling Congress took place in charming Salzburg, Austria, between the 18th and 20th of January. This event is billed as the international platform and opportunity for reviewing the challenges faced by the Electronics Recycling Industry. Experts and decision makers from the entire electronics supply chain attended the event, including recyclers and producers, collection organizations, OEMs and service providers. Jelle Slenters, Jan-Hein Stiens and Henk Neutkens travelled to Austria to represent Sims Lifecycle Services at the Congress. They w ..read more

Certification programs for electronics recycling and IT asset disposition (ITAD) are an important way for companies to demonstrate compliance to industry standards. When enterprises tender their ITAD and disposal services, these certifications provide reassurance that potential vendors operate to best practices. Sustainable Electronics Recycling International’s (SERI) Responsible Recycling (R2) Standard is the world’s most widely adopted standard for used electronics reuse and recycling. A voluntary, global standard, R2 addresses the full reverse supply chain from first use through end-of-life ..read more

Sims Lifecycle Services was delighted to host the business news publisher, Business Insider, at one of our US sites recently.   We hosted Business Insider at our Nashville, Tennessee ITAD facility to record their most recent insider video on electronics recovery and recycling. We invite you to view the Business Insider video. Five points of interest from the video include: Only 17% of electronics produced are recycled every year. $57 billion is thrown away every year, when electronics are landfilled instead of recycled. Explanation of why recycling should be a last resort when retir ..read more

October 14, 2020 marked the third International E-Waste Day, designed to promote compliant and sustainable disposal of e-waste throughout the world. This year, amid the global pandemic, a particular focus given to education and activities predominantly took place online. Virtual Conference: “A circular economy in E-waste for an Atmanirbhar Bharat” Sims Lifecycle Services’ (SLS) Global President, Ingrid Sinclair, spoke in the virtual event “A circular economy in E-waste for an Atmanirbhar Bharat (Self-reliant India)”. Hosted by Karo Sambhav and the U.S. India Business Council (USIBC), during th ..read more

The coronavirus has continued to impact telecommunications and technology industries in many ways. Recently, the tech industry has shown a 14 percent decrease in global device shipments. IT spending, purchasing and manufacturing is down, but cloud infrastructure is currently coping with increased traffic. These behaviors have led to a sustainable trend of resourceful IT asset management and reverse logistics. Some legacy technologies have found use in the circular economy as opposed to making their way to e-waste streams sooner. Reuse of a company-owned asset in a less demanding environment he ..read more

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could design out waste and pollution to create a world without waste to preserve our planet? In just one hour an estimated 900 metric tons of plastic waste enters our oceans – the mass of nearly 600 cars. In the long term, this has severe negative impacts to marine life and the quality of our oceans and waterways. Plastic is just one example but the magnitude of the issue becomes more clear when looking at the bigger picture of distributed products and their material streams. Annually approximately 50 million tonnes of electronic waste (e-waste) is produced with only ..read more

Ensure aviation data security and offset carbon emissions through responsible IT resource management. Data Security: Aviation IT security is a top priority. The global airline industry has continued to grow over recent years, which inherently brings an increase in data threats. A global airline CEO survey disclosed that 85 percent of airline CEO’s view airline cybersecurity as a significant risk, likely reflecting the highly sensitive nature of flight systems and passenger data. It can also take as long as six months to detect a data breach according to an IBM study, which tells us that data b ..read more

International E-Waste Day International E-Waste Day was introduced by the WEEE Forum in 2018 to encourage consumers to responsibly reuse and recycle electronics. Sims Lifecycle Services (SLS) processes consumer devices as well as professional IT equipment from companies around the world. Retired electronic waste (e-waste) from consumer products is often collected and delivered to SLS for proper end-of-life management. SLS supports the International E-Waste Day to create awareness with consumers as well as businesses to aid what to do with unwanted e-waste. E-waste is one of the fastest gr ..read more