The Reverse Supply Chain of E-Waste Management Processes

Read this article. The authors propose that reverse supply chains can achieve economic as well as environmental and social benefits. Regarding your electronic devices, do you know how you can recycle and reverse supply them back to a vendor?

The Theoretical Background

The circular economy concept is increasingly gaining great relevance in academic research and on the agenda of policy-makers. The main aim of the CE framework is to create a regenerative system able to ensure optimal reuse, renovation, remanufacturing and recycling of products, materials and waste by handling them in closed loops. Such restorative economic system should be intentionally developed and designed through the adoption of strategies that close and narrow resource loops.

From the CE perspective, the reverse supply chain and the reverse logistic can be considered necessary approaches to "close the loops" of end-of-life (EOL) products. In literature, several definitions of Reverse Logistics exist (Table 1), which, although emphasizing different aspects, all highlight the importance of the recovery and reuse processes of EOL products and/or their disposal. In other words, the scholars aim to underline the environmental sustainability view of reverse logistics.

Table 1. Some principal definitions of Reverse Logistics present in literature.

Definition of Reverse Logistics
"… The term often used to refer the role of logistics in recycling, waste disposal and management of harzadous materials, a broader perspective includes all relating to logistics activities carried out in source reduction, recycling, substitution, reuse of materials and disposal".
"…The process whereby companies can become environmentally efficient through recycling, reusing, and reducing the amount of materials used".
"The process of planning, implementing, and controlling the efficient, cost-effective flow of raw materials, in-process inventory, finished goods, and related information from the point of consumption to the point of origin for the purpose of recapturing value or proper disposal".
"… Reverse Logistics is the process of planning, implementing, and controlling the efficient, effective inbound flow and storage of secondary goods and related information opposite to the traditional supply chain direction for the purpose of recovering value or proper disposal".
"The process of planning, implementing and controlling backward flow of row materials, in process inventory, packaging and finished goods, from a manufacturing, distribution or use point of proper disposal".
"As an aspect of sustainable supply chain management (SSCM), Reverse Logistics can be regarded as a business strategy in which recovery activities are imposed for the purpose of increasing sustainability"

A strong relationship between RL and CE exists. The relationship between CE and RL can be seen from their general purpose, their main focus, and some characteristics. In particular, both of the approaches aim to: (i) support a more sustainable socio-economic development, (ii) focus on environmental, economic and ecological aspects and on the proper management of used product, waste and EOL, and so on, and (iii) have several similar characteristics, such as the repair, refurbishing, recycling and disposal cycles. Nevertheless, some of the CE principles (e.g., leakage minimization) are considerably broader than the RL activities.

As shown in Table 1, some definitions of RL include also manufacturing activities in the Reverse Logistics definitions, such as recycling or recovery of EOL products. Notwithstanding, scholars claim that, when there are also manufacturing activities, it is more appropriate to adopt a Reverse Supply Chain (RSC) framework.

The RSC definition considered in this work is the efficient and effective management of a series of necessary activities to recuperate a product from the consumer to dispose of it or recover the residual value. A RSC is composed of five activities, namely Collection or acquisitions; Reverse logistics; Inspection and arrangement; Reconditioning; Distribution and sale.

The collection is, therefore, a critical activity for the whole WEEE management cycle being: (a) the initial phase which effectiveness influences the performance of the remaining phases, and (b) the WEEE collected represents only the 40% of EEE put on the market in the period 2010–2016 in EU after 10 years of regulations. Moreover, among the various EOL products identified in RSC research, WEEE is considered as one of most appropriate, especially if we consider that the growth of the EEE market segment is one of the fastest.

According to this, an extensive literature about the WEEE management exists that focuses on several different aspects. It is important to underline that WEEE collection phase is very critical for the effectiveness and efficacy of the whole WEEE management process and, if properly managed, it can lead to improvements in the quantity and the quality of collected waste.

Within the literature on the topic, some authors analyze the contribute of different socio-economic and technical variables on the collection performance at a regional level, or compared the technical efficiency of dynamic logistic models with traditional ones in a local context. Biganzoli et al. evaluated the environmental performance of the overall WEEE collection system associated with e-waste management in a specific Italian region, while Favot et al. studied if EPR fees on WEEE stimulate proactive behaviour and impact on the e-waste collection performance in Italy. Other authors compared the overall waste management performance and the adoption of proper practices between developed and developing European countries. Many scholars proposed quantitative models for the optimization of e-waste CCs, e.g., or new costing methodologies to support decision making processes. Another important result in literature is that the increasing of the number of collection centers corresponds to a positive variation in the waste collection performance. In particular, they show that the highest scores in term of WEEE collection performance is achieved in those municipalities which set the collection centers. On the contrary, Bouvier and Wagner found that the WEEE collection performance are not affecting by driving distance and, thus, number of CCs. As a consequence, it is important to note that empirical findings about the effect of techno-organisational variables (e.g., presence of CCs) are not always consistent. Waste collection has been analyzed for the stream of municipal waste in Italy, highlighting that legislative measures have both improved the national results and increased the gap among different areas.

However, to our knowledge, few papers specifically evaluated: (a) the impact of the European and national regulatory system on the achievement of e-waste collection targets; (b) the organizational structure and the territorial distribution of the WEEE collection system. To contribute to shedding light on this aspect, a first step is to provide a synthesis of specific aspects of the EU regulatory system that are illustrated in the next section.