Dell leaders will join members of the E-Waste
Solutions Alliance for Africa in Nairobi today to mark the opening of East
Africa Compliant Recycling – the region’s first large-scale e-waste recycling
facility – and the creation of a new e-waste business to be supported by a
regulatory model tailored for developing countries.
The new regulatory model was developed by
Kenyan officials and representatives from non-governmental organizations and
the IT and e-recycling industries. The hub was designed by industry, in
collaboration with policymakers.
According to the Honorable Amina A. Abdalla,
MP, Chairperson, Committee of Environment and Natural Resources, Kenyan
Parliament “We’re looking at ensuring
that e-waste is recycled in such a manner that ensures our people are not
exposed hazardous materials. And so basically, we’ve invested in getting out a
regulation that is more proactive managing e-waste. With the regulation, its
enforcement, and partnering with not only recyclers but producers, we’ll go a
long way in addressing these challenges.”
Alice Akinyi Kaudia, Environment Secretary, Ministry of Environment, Water and Natural
Resources added that “We are seeing
green technology is good business sense, not just because it creates profits,
but if the persons working for such a company are of higher health status
because of a good environment, then productivity also goes up. We want to
create jobs, particularly for our youth. So it’s a triple way: We have a clean
environment, we have jobs created, we have industrial growth and economic
growth of the country.”
Jean Cox-Kearns, Director of Compliance, Dell
Takeback “It is so exciting to see this sustainable model be implemented on the
ground in Nairobi, creating green jobs and implementing a solution that deals
with e-waste being generated both in Kenya and the greater East African Region,
and providing environmentally sound management of e-waste collected.” He submitted
A practical, sustainable regulatory approach
Developing regulations from Kenya’s National
Environment Management Authority will help generate capacity for the new
e-waste hub by requiring electronics companies to meet certain thresholds for
e-waste collection and treatment.
Underscoring the
regulatory framework is the recognition that, particularly in developing
countries, e-waste has monetary value. That value, combined with the lack of a
sustainable e-waste recycling infrastructure in East Africa, likely would have
abated the effectiveness of common regulatory approaches to funding and
managing e-waste collection and recycling, such as import fees. Those means
also could make computing less affordable for Kenyan citizens and public and
private-sector organizations.
Other African
nations have monitored the development of the new regulatory model, with a view
to replicating the approach.
An innovative business model that creates jobs
At the heart of the
business model are shipping container-housed collection points located throughout
Kenya. Each collection point functions as its own independent small business,
purchasing e-waste from newly-trained individual collectors. To date, four
collection points have been established – two funded by Dell – with at least
forty more planned.
Once a shipping container is filled to
capacity, its contents are resold to the main hub where the e-waste will be sustainably
processed into material fractions and sold back to the technology industry. Each
stage of the model is designed to be profitable for participants, from
individual collector to collection point to hub.
In addition to
protecting the environment, the model is aimed at creating thousands of green
jobs at the facility and across supporting logistics and collection networks,
in part by converting existing informal-sector e-waste “pickers” into trained
and legitimately-compensated e-waste collectors. Dell and others have invested
in training programs to educate workers on the safe collection and recycling of
e-waste.
A separate Dell-sponsored
project launched last month already has micro financed and created jobs for 27
women from Nairobi’s Mukuru informal settlement, known as the Mukuru slums.
Following the satisfactory completion of a training course, women use funds
made available through mobile technology to purchase and resell waste. In its first two weeks, women participating
in the Dell-Mukuru collected 1.5 containers of e-waste, which was resold to the
new recycling hub.
Prior to the
program, women from Mukuru often used unsafe and unhealthy means to collect and
resell e-waste to the informal market.
Advancing Dell’s Legacy of Good 2020 goals
Dell is a
global leader in the collection and
recycling of e-waste. As part of its
2020
Legacy for Good Plan, the company recently set goals to recover 2 billion
pounds of electronics and reuse more than 50 million pounds of recycled-content
plastics in its products by 2020. Integral to both goals is the ability to
access e-waste in developing countries, using methods that do not put people or
the environment at risk.
About Dell
By incorporating environmental sustainability into every aspect
of what the company does, Dell provides customers with solutions that give them
the power to do more while minimizing the impact on the planet. For more
information, visit www.dell.com/corporateresponsibility.
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