One man’s trash is another man’s problem

GLOBAL – We recently wrote about some things we discovered about Nokia’s attitude towards spreading environmentally sensitive thinking across the company and suppliers. These discoveries were prompted by an article on a phone buy-back scheme we had highlighted and which was called out by some of our colleagues.

What ensued was a fascinating travel through the problems of e-waste and finding out why Nokia does not like to promote buy-back and reuse schemes. Below, we discuss some issues of e-waste and the reasons behind Nokia’s stance. We hope that it helps you understand a problem that is basically invisible to most of us in Europe and North America.

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Reuse or recycle

GLOBAL – Since writing the other day about recycling in India, and alternative ways to recycle in the UK, I’ve been a bit bothered about the whole issue (confusion?) between recycling and reusing old and unwanted products. First, to clear something up. The survey that was done last year related to recycling. As commenter Ripal pointed out, reuse is already a big deal in India, and is perhaps why people aren’t bothered about recycling (more on the differences later). Equally, in the second article on recycling, the first port of call for many of the still working devices that land on mobile recycler’s desks is reuse, either as a second hand device in the local market, or to be exported abroad.