A research team from the Golisano Institute for Sustainability (GIS) at RIT is headed to West Africa later this month to facilitate an important discussion on the current state of consumer electronics (CEP) markets in the Republic of Ghana.
Nabil Nasr, associate professor and director of GIS. Michael Thurston, technical director and research faculty. and Chelsea Gulliver, economic and policy analyst, will lead a workshop, “Promoting the Circular Economy in Consumer E-Marketing” on January 24-25 in Accra, Ghana, on behalf of United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the International Resource Table (IRP), and the Ministry of Environment, Science, Technology and Innovation (MESTI).
The workshop is designed to be a consultation aimed at understanding:
- The Current Status of Waste Management and Recycling in Ghana.
- The current state of consumer electronic markets in the West African country.
- The technological, logistical, policy and market conditions necessary to enable the scaling-up of value-preserving processes (VRPs) and the implementation of circular economy strategies in Ghana, including opportunities and barriers.
Both UNEP and IRP are currently involved in studies promoting the decoupling of economic development from environmental degradation, according to Nasr. The goal of these studies is to clarify the relationships between industrial processes in the manufacture of materials and products, and their effects on economic and environmental outcomes, he added.
“One such method to achieve this goal is through the promotion of circular and regenerative production processes, i.e. the circular economy,” said Nasr, who cited the additional contributions of researchers supporting the project, including Allen Luccitti, senior staff engineer and Ph.D. student Kyle Parnell. “However, the scientific analysis of sustainability, as well as the barriers and opportunities in the development of circular economy policy, have not been fully explored in sectors such as the consumer electronics sector.”
The upcoming workshop is designed to change that. In the information age, access to consumer electronic products is critical to society’s techno-economic and social development, according to information from the lab. Manufacturing and retail CEPs are important parts of industrial economic productivity. Some global estimates show that global industry revenue reached $1 trillion in 2020 and will grow to $1.5 trillion by 2026.
Consequently, the manufacture, distribution, use and end-of-life disposal of CEPs are responsible for significant impacts, from material waste and toxicity to greenhouse gas emissions, to material depletion and land use change, to the negative impacts of these of impacts on human health and development.
In addition, CEPs often require critical raw materials, create a high energy demand in manufacturing and use, and result in a hazardous waste stream. Existing resource-saving and circular economy strategies used in CEP sectors – including recycling and resale in secondary markets – do not adequately manage these issues and leave challenges in waste disposal (e.g. waste or toxic materials) largely unaddressed, Nasr said.
Since CEPs represent one of the fastest growing waste streams worldwide, the IRP and RIT are currently studying the methodology and approaches needed to expand the role of value retention processes (VRPs) in CEP markets. This will include modeling the potential economic value and environmental impacts, and developing guidance for policy and decision makers, the outputs of which will incorporate the findings of the study.
Nasr said the investigation into expanding the role of VRPs in CEP markets is the direct result of a call that came out of a meeting of G7 Environment Ministers in 2019, asking the IRP to “continue its work on value retention processes ( reconstruction, refurbishment, repair and direct reuse) supporting resource efficiency as a contribution to the G7 Alliance’s planned work on resource efficiency to preserve value, in particular by addressing its potential in the consumer goods sector’.
The case study countries of the USA and Ghana were selected to provide fair representations of industrial, economic and environmental conditions in the Global North and Global South markets, respectively. As a result, the technical conclusions and corresponding policy recommendations generated by case-by-case models may serve as operational guidelines in other contexts that share similar characteristics of industrial infrastructure, policy frameworks, and customer/market behavior.
It is believed that CEP markets in Ghana can benefit from the study findings through increased economic development opportunities associated with VRP uptake, such as increased workforce skills, expanded CEP market access to new consumer segments, greater resource efficiency and recovery and the potential to reduce risks to the environment and human health. However, in order to make decisions, researches will be needed to assess the implementation of the circular economy in Ghana on the current state of the CEP. This evaluation will require input from stakeholders who interact directly with the CEPs.
The discussion will take place with a mix of stakeholders, including national governments, local authorities, recyclers and repair shop representatives.