2025: A Year for Big Changes in ITAD and E-waste

Its nothing new to see every holiday gift guide filled with the latest tech gadgets and popular electronics, but a growing trend is for all sorts of things to be produced with power and circuitry that previously didn’t have electronic versions. It’s reasonable to doubt that smart mirrors and rechargeable pepper mills will entirely replace their low-tech counterparts but in any case, these and many other things are being produced, sold, and sooner or later tossed out.

While e-waste used to be “another man’s treasure” thanks to abundant metal ripe for recovery, the adage doesn’t hold true with many of today’s electronics. Advancements in manufacturing technology have minimized raw material requirements and made it cheap to glue a battery into nearly everything. Now the cost to recycle usually outweighs the value of the material. This has been true for some time, but the solutions don’t come as quickly as the changes to the material. While some legislation exists to try to balance this discrepancy, its typical for companies and municipalities to pay the difference when e-waste is finally handled.

While it seems that everything is changing, what will define 2025? Will advancements in recycling technology reduce costs and improve raw material recovery enough to make e-waste valuable? Maybe rising domestic demand for critical minerals will lead to an “urban mining” effect. Here are the 3 things that we think will shape the new year for the e-waste industry:

1.????? A greater focus on policy

In 2022, new legislation was passed in California to make significant changes to the CalRecycle Covered Electronic Waste program. SB 1215 added battery embedded units to the list of covered devices and made other changes to the program that was initially passed in 2003. 2025 will see the establishment of the claims process, a list created by manufacturers to identify covered products, and the establishment of a fee added to the purchase of covered products.

2.????? Advancements in Processing Automation

Machine processing and robotic disassembly have been around for some time, though often they are limited to specific devices or material streams. With constantly changing inputs, significant manual sorting and disassembly is still required. Many technologies which promise to improve automation have made rapid advancements including machine learning, image recognition and artificial intelligence. Combined with the recent use of Xray technology that has been used for identifying embedded batteries, automated sorting and processing may be a major area of infrastructure investment.

3.????? Increased Domestic manufacturing

Government support has played some role in the incentivizing of domestic manufacturing with the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act which address economic growth and job creation, among other things. However, these aren’t the only reasons for a projected increase. Ensuring stable supplies of materials used in critical infrastructure is driving an increase in domestic production. For many of the materials required to produce electronics, recycling is a small but consistently growing source and sometimes the only domestic source available. There are also environmental benefits to production in the US since stricter regulations and reduced importing will lead to a smaller impact from mining and manufacturing.

The landscape of e-waste management is poised for transformation in 2025. With a strong emphasis on policy, advancements in processing automation, and increased domestic manufacturing, the industry will not only enhance the efficiency and sustainability of e-waste recycling but also highlight the critical role of innovation and regulation in shaping a more environmentally responsible future. As we move forward, a combination of technology, policy, and industry will be key ensuring a circular economy of electronics.