What Will It Take to Create a Circular Economy for Electronics?

What you'll learn:

• Challenges in developing a circular economy.
• What is the Circular Electronics Partnership (CEP)?
• The key role engineers and designers play in repair, reuse, and recycling of electronics.

In today’s electronics landscape, engineers find themselves on the front lines of the push to design products for a circular economy. With up to 80% of a product's environmental impact determined in the design phase, they’re shaping not only how long it can last before it must be replaced, but also its potential to be repaired and recycled. Their decisions can prevent the piling up of vast amounts of electronic waste the world over.

While the electronics industry is under pressure from consumers and regulators to be more sustainable, it continues to grapple with its environmental footprint. The challenge lies in the nature of mass production, which remains fundamentally unsustainable. For the most part, electronic products and components inside them rely on resource-hungry processes and global supply chains that run counter to the core principles of a circular economy. Is a product sustainable if it’s designed for obsolescence within a couple of years?

But many of the movers and shakers in the electronics industry are buying into the concept of the circular economy. Several tech giants and global companies are working together under The Circular Electronics Partnership (CEP) to address challenges related to repairing electronics, replacing obsolete components, upgrading the hardware and sotware, reusing components in other products, and recycling what remains. The roster includes Amazon, Dell, Google, Hewlett-Packard, Jabil, Lenovo, and Microsoft, among others.

The CEP released the Circular Electronics Design Guide to give electronics firms and engineers a blueprint to integrate the concepts of the circular economy into their designs. To learn more about it, Electronic Design reached out to Teun van Wetten, Design Director and Head of Sustainability at Accenture Industry X, which worked with more than 60 industry experts to compile the 600-page report. It’s free to download.

He discussed the lessons learned and the central role that electrical engineers and electronics designers are playing in creating a more circular economy. This Q&A has been lightly edited and formatted for clarity.

What are the biggest obstacles to making a circular economy work in the electronics industry?

Some of the biggest obstacles are tied to the risks many electronics companies associate with circularity. Transitioning to a more circular economy means a fundamental shift in how they have operated for decades.

That means adopting everything from new business models and new approaches to product development and supply-chain management. There’s an inherent risk in venturing into uncharted territory. When it comes to sustainability, it can be challenging to outline clear economic benefits from these changes. No matter what it is, companies often face uncertainty and hesitancy when trying out new ways of working and conducting business.

Additionally, there are deeper challenges that can also significantly slow progress. These include absent or inconsistent standards and regulations; inadequate infrastructure for collection, reuse, and recycling; limited access to financing; and lack of transparency and traceability systems across the value chain.

Do you think that the broader electronics industry is doing enough to overcome these issues? If not, where could they improve?

There’s no one-size-fits-all solution. Each company, even within the same industry, must figure out its unique approach to circularity. But at the same time, cross-company efforts such as the CEP play a vital role in addressing systemic challenges that affect all industry players. The electronics industry has carved out a leadership role in circular innovation, but tackling its environmental impact requires even faster progress and more radical changes to business practices.

A key area for improvement is enabling easier information and data sharing between companies. Without collaboration across the electronics industry, a transition to circularity will remain fragmented and difficult to achieve.

What role do engineers play in creating more circular electronic devices? How important is buy-in from management or from their suppliers and manufacturers to accomplish their goals?

Engineers and designers play a role in circular electronic designs by making them tangible. By prototyping solutions that facilitate repair, reuse, or recycling of electronics, or simply giving feedback on feasibility, they help align company leadership around circularity goals.

This is essential to creating the management buy-in needed to move efforts forward and implement circular solutions successfully. The experts we consulted all said the same thing: Company leaders need to be willing to take risks and embrace solutions with unclear or unpredictable outcomes. In many cases, success hinged on leaders having accepted uncertain business cases and being open to new ways of working. The same principle applies to supplier buy-in. However, securing supplier support tends to depend on an organization’s size and influence.

Larger companies can leverage their market position to enforce stricter requirements on suppliers, while smaller companies may face challenges. Notably, large manufacturers imposing new standards can create a ripple effect, encouraging other suppliers to adopt these practices.

What advice would you give engineers who are looking to build products with repair, reuse, and recycling in mind?

Always consider what’s in it for the customer and the business. Focusing on these aspects increases the likelihood of gaining support from leadership to implement design changes. Advocating for changes without addressing customer and business benefits often turns into an uphill battle.

But the onus is also on electronics companies to support their engineering and design talent’s efforts by upskilling them, introducing sustainability and circularity into their KPIs, and providing them with tools, frameworks, and methodologies to guide their decision-making. For example, tools that allow early-stage evaluation of repairability, recyclability, or overall lifecycle impact would empower them to assess whether their designs are on the right track.

Out of all the insights in the report, did any of them stand out to you? Was there anything you didn’t expect when you and the other experts at Accenture started putting it together?

We weren’t so much surprised by the insights as by the resonance and interest from companies. When we reached out to them, we anticipated much more reluctance to invest time and effort in sharing what was previously internal knowledge. Instead, the response was incredibly positive, and at times, we felt overwhelmed by how many were eager to share their knowledge, assets, and documentation for the sake of this industry-wide shift.

But that highlights how unique this topic is: The people behind or leading these efforts within their organizations are deeply committed to making a difference. Their dedication drives a level of openness rarely seen in other areas. This is encouraging because real progress in circularity requires industry-scale collaboration, beyond the confines of individual companies.