by Caroline Rennie
You may have seen the Monty Python film “The Holy Grail” – in which plague victims are collected and piled high on a cart for removal. One is being carried over his relative’s shoulder and you can hear a cry “wait! I’m not dead yet!”.
So it is with many products that have been discarded – but are not so dead they won’t come back to haunt your business.
Travelling the (under)world
Some time ago, Greenpeace took an old television, fully disabled it, and inserted a tracking mechanism. They then took it to Hampshire County Council for recycling, and it was passed on to the council’s ‘recycling’ company, BJ Electronics. Relabelled ‘second-hand goods’ it was shipped off to Nigeria to be sold again. In an operation worthy of a Bond film (James Bond), Greenpeace managed to locate the tv in the Allaba market in Lagos, and buy it back. They even got a receipt including the TV’s serial number. [It's well worth seeing the narrated slideshow at the end of this article]
This violated the Basel Converntion (global), EU directives, UK legislation, as well as standard ethical norms. And of course the television is branded, so finding a responsible party isn’t, in the end, so difficult.
A simple legal issue?
You might think that the passage from legal to illegal was for the courts alone. But this ignores how public issues play themselves out.
In India, Greenpeace dumped electronic waste in front of Philips’ Indian headquarters in Mumbia because Philips didn’t apply its own corporate e-waste policy in India (local law did not require them to). The media picked this up, and as they did so, highlighted the seamy side of the illegal trade in used electronics. Photographs of children dipping electronics in vats of acid, or burning off the plastic by hand, fumes clouding the air, were shown in papers and magazines and even in Western museums.
Philips pays
Philip’s has now agreed to voluntarily pay the cost of taking its used electronics back at the end of their useful life in 8 major cities in India.
Philips may well be arguing that they ‘won’ because they pass on the costs to consumers; they’ve limited collection to a few cities rather than having take back country-wide; and that they were able to delay the costs for years.
It’s hard to get rid of the mud
But in my mind this qualifies as an unequivocal loss for Philips: first they demonstrate that they believe that their corporate actions are not linked to their stated values and policies, but to lower local standards; then they put up with years of negative publicity about their policies while arguing publicy that they shouldn’t be forced to take responsibility; and finally they do take responsibility and bear the full costs of recycling. Now they have to shore up their reputation.
The truth is, no manufacturer relinquishes responsibility for their products. Government policies and consumer expectations are building on eachother to increase responsibility on manufacturers for their choices from “cradle to grave”. Since Switzerland first passed waste electronics legislation in 1991, the EU, Japan, Taiwan, S. Korea, 17 States in the US, and several provinces in Canada all require take-back of electronics; and far more globally require take-back/recycling of used packaging, paints, paper, hazardous waste, batteries and other products.
Four steps to banishing your product’s ghosts…
- Find out if you are legally responsible. It’s a minimum responsibility, but its already useful to know if what you make – or what you pack it in – fall under legislation in countries where it is sold & used.
- Find out what’s happening to them. Whether you’re repsonsible or not. The Marketing Director of a stone company called Marshall’s in the UK was trying to understand his company’s impacts, so he “walked the supply chain.” An experience that left no doubt in his mind about the changes he wanted to see – to protect his company, and to protect his conscience [from a briliant series of articles by Mallen Baker called Values Carved in Stone].
- Know what your stakeholders expect. More often than not trade associations have sister organisations dedicated to take-back issues, and it’s helpful to know how this is being handled in each country, and the impact on you; Most importantly, you want to know what key stakeholders (environmental groups; social justice organisations; local communities; government; etc.) want from you and your industry. If your trade association isn’t managing such discussions, it’s well worth your doing so directly.
- See how to differentiate yourself. Determine what you could do differently that would allow you to win hearts and minds, while blowing your competitors out of the water: HP said “send us back the electronics you want us to recycle” thus ensuring that those who cared had an outlet for action; IBM developed logistics systems for enabling efficient collection and recycling, and then set up a profitable consultancy to sell their learnings to others.
Out of the Graveyard
Ultimately Philips determined that certain metals they need are in such short supply that they are better off recovering them from their own products. So they are working in the EU to set up a recovery scheme independent of the industry schemes – presumably to control take-back of their products. Which would also give them a powerful incentive to make recycling of their own products easy and economical.
So it could be that when you invite your products back, not only do they not come back unexpectedly to haunt you, they bring you good will – and a supply of critical materials. What’s not sustainable about that?
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