3 Economics of cell phone reuse and recycling
Some reuse and recycling activities are voluntary and environmentally motivated, yet most are driven either by market economics or legislation. Apart from the previously mentioned European WEEE directive and California’s AB2901, there is currently little legislation mandating cell phone reuse or recycling. Even the WEEE directive has fairly modest collection targets (4 kg of WEEE per head per year) of any type of e-waste, whereas AB2901 only mandates a collection infrastructure for cell phones and has neither collection nor reuse or recycling targets. So, in the absence of strong legislation, profitability is currently the main driver of the collection and reprocessing of retired handsets.