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WEEE management in Japan
Chapter
21
WEEE management in Japan
Fumikazu Yoshida1, Haruyo Yoshida2 1
Aichi Gakuin University, Nagoya, Japan; 2Sapporo University, Sapporo, Japan
CHAPTER OUTLINE
21.1 Introduction 573 21.2 Japan’s home appliance recycling system: purpose and background 21.3 The collection rate 576 21.4 Cost and recycling quality 577 21.5 Export problems 580 21.6 Economic analysis for urban mining 582 21.7 Conclusions 586 References 587 Further reading 589
574
21.1 INTRODUCTION The acronym WEEE (waste electronic and electrical equipment) signifies a relatively new category of waste type, a category that includes precious metals as well as such toxic substances as lead and polybrominated biphenyls, and one whose components require separate sorting and special treatment for waste management. The cost of processing discarded WEEE is probably the motivating factor in shipping it to countries where the labor is cheaper and health and safety regulations are not stringently enforced. If the treatment process is not supervised under proper safety conditions, it may ultimately cause serious air pollution, contamination of the soil and groundwater pollution, as when, for instance, strong acids are used for metal extraction and burning used wire (BAN/SVTC, 2002; Yoshida and Yoshida, 2008; Zheng et al., 2008). To tackle such problems as these, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has proposed that countries should adopt the extended producers responsibility (EPR) principle, and the European Union (EU), for one, has implemented the WEEE and restriction of hazardous substances (RoHS) directives to collect WEEE separately from other municipal solid waste (MSW) and to manage it with the participation of producers (financially and/or Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Handbook. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-102158-3.00021-5 Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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physically). Between 2001 and 2005, countries such as Japan and the member countries of the EU, introduced the EPR principle into their WEEE recycling systems. The purpose of this chapter is to draw lessons from the ways in which developed countries, in this case Japan, are managing to deal with WEEE. Japan launched its own WEEE recycling system in 2001, and 11 years later the Japanese government conducted a second review of how the system was working; it released its final report, based on documents submitted by Japan’s Home Appliance Recycling System Review Council, in February 2014. The present authors were able to conduct a study of Japan as developed countries with respect to the achievements and challenges of their WEEE recycling systems; we focused on three dimensions: (1) material flow analysis, (2) regime-actor analysis, and (3) economic analysis, which the study of circular economy requires (see Yoshida, 2005). Previous studies of WEEE have focused on the main upon aspects of the material flow (Jofre and Morioka, 2005; Tasaki, 2006; Terazono et al., 2006) or on an analysis of the economic features (Hosoda, 2007). Here, we attempt to analyze the WEEE recycling system through a focus on a combination of four interrelated issues: (1) the need to improve the collection rate of WEEE, (2) questions of the cost and the quality of recycling, (3) the problems of cross-border recycling, and (4) economic aspects of “urban mining” related to WEEE. This review looks at, in order: (1) the systemic character of WEEE recycling in Japan, (2) the collection rate, (3) the cost and the quality of the recycling, (4) the problems raised by the export of WEEE, and (5) the urban mining agenda.
21.2 JAPAN’S HOME APPLIANCE RECYCLING SYSTEM: PURPOSE AND BACKGROUND Japan’s consumer equipment recycling system requires that consumers pay a recycling fee when discarding any one of four equipment types (TVs, air conditioners, refrigerators, and washing machines), that retailers take them back, and that producers recycle them. Two problems were the basis for the successful creation of Japan’s home appliance recycling system: the shortage of landfill space and the need for the recovery and use of resources. A characteristic of the system is that Japanese municipalities do not, as is the case in some other countries, themselves perform the collection and processing operations for recycling. The recycling fee and fund is managed by the Association for Electric Home Appliances (AEHA, 2016), while collection and processing are carried out under a producer partnership system that
21.2 Japan’s home appliance recycling system: purpose and background 575
is divided between Group A (Panasonic, Toshiba, and others) and Group B (Mitsubishi, Hitachi, and others). As for small electronics items (including personal computers [PCs] and cellular phones), a different recycling system was introduced in 2013. This system designated 28 items and each municipality decides on the collection items. The recyclers have to get permission for each collection and recycling of items from the central government. In 2013, for used PCs of 17.80 million units, about 6.55 million were transferred overseas for reuse or recycling. As for cellular phones, about 40% of 36 million used units are privately stored and collected and recycled, about 896 tons by the mobile recycling network, and 117 tons by municipalities (Fig. 21.1). In contrast, the EU regulations (1) cover a broad range of products, (2) assign responsibility and costs to producers, (3) establish collection targets and recycling rates, and (4) limit the use of hazardous substances. Their purpose is to build a system that, by these means, recovers WEEE separately rather than disposing of it as municipal solid waste (OKOPOL/IIIEE/RPA, 2007). In reality, however, in Europe only 35% (3.3 million tons) of all the e-waste discarded in 2012 ended up in the officially reported amounts of collection and recycling systems according to the Countering WEEE Illegal Trade Summary
Outlet 576,000 ton/year
Home 95.8%
C to C reuse 15.0% Municipality solid waste Municipality 62.4% Retailer 5.6% Town collector 13.3%
Office 4.2%
Landfill by municipality 52%
Recycler & resource collector Secondhand dealer & exporter
Domestic smelter 21.6% Reuse market: Domestic 10.2% Abroad 6.6%
Oversea scrap 0.3%
n FIGURE 21.1 Estimation of e-waste flow from used small-size electronics in 2013.
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Report (2015). The other 65% (6.15 million tons) was either: exported (1.5 million tons), recycled under noncompliant conditions in Europe (3.15 million tons), scavenged for valuable parts (750,000 tons), or simply thrown in waste bins (750,000 tons).
21.3 THE COLLECTION RATE What has Japan achieved so far? Previously, only valuable metals were recovered from discarded household appliances, and the great majority was then land-filled; now, under the new system, introduced in 2001, about half of all discarded appliances are treated after collection. Newest data is from 2012: n
n
n
n
Amounts collected and treated: 17.02 million units treatment per year, 0.468 million tons treatment per year, about 3.7 kg per capita of the four items. The numbers of collected units started in 2001 increased from 8.3 million units and 0.32 million tons to 17.02 million units and 0.468 million tons in 2012 (Joint Meeting, 2014). Material recovered: 0.39 million tons per year; this does not include payment to recyclers for accepting waste. Effects on the environment: reduction of landfill (extended for the remaining years from 12.8 years in 2001 to 14.8 years in 2006), recovery and treatment of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) (about 1458 tons in 2012), management of hazardous substances. Design for the environment: long-life design, design for easy disassembly and for the recovery of plastics (Aizawa et al., 2008; Joint Meeting, 2008a).
Reviews of the Japanese systems have found that increasing the collection rate is a vital requirement. In Japan, 17.02 million of an estimated 22 million units are taken back by retail stores, of which, 11 million units are recycled by their producers, while the rest disappear in an “invisible flow”; and while the primary collection rate at retail stores is 75%, the final processing rate drops to 50%. The main reason is that of the 9.7 million units taken back by retailers, as many as 3.8 million discarded appliances enter channels outside the system. No recycling fees have been paid for these appliances, and they are not taken to the processing facilities of producers or other parties (see Fig. 21.2). Furthermore, because Japan’s WEEE recycling system is built around recycling, there is no place in its policy for reuse. Because another underlying factor is the high recycling fee that consumers must pay when turning in an appliance, the authorities, fearful that these conditions would lead to illegal dumping, have considered switching to a system for advance fee payment. Items taken back free of charge go abroad, whereas
21.4 Cost and recycling quality 577
Outlet 18 million units Home & office
Retailor 9.4 million units
Formal recycling by manufactures 11 million units
Reuse market 7 million units Domestic 1-2 million Abroad 1 million
Town collector secondhand dealer 4.8 million units Illegal 0.11 million
Resource recovery by informal sector 5.56 million units Municipality
n FIGURE 21.2 Estimation of e-waste flow from large-size home electronics 2015.
items that are paid for enter the domestic used market, although this means that the route from the retailers to points of sale for domestic reuse is decreasing dramatically. Consequently, the route taken by the buyers seems to play a major role in determining reuse or material recovery. In 2016, the used CRT (color TV, HS code 852872900) of 0.547 million units are exported to Thailand and 0.171 million units to the Philippines (Trade Statistics of Japan). As for the Japanese system, more positive options that would serve to raise the collection rate are: (1) free take-back when a product is discarded, (2) the use by municipalities of the agreed collection channels, and (3) paying for the collection. By combining (1) and (2), Korea has achieved a higher collection rate than Japan, as well as including a wider range of categories among the collected items.
21.4 COST AND RECYCLING QUALITY Although some have claimed that the high cost of Japan’s recycling process can in part be explained by the recycling fees customers must pay when turning in an old piece of equipment, the producers, who are responsible for WEEE processing, seek to rebut this criticism with the counterclaim that the quality of recycling is also high. Nevertheless, the problems caused by the high cost of recycling could lead to recycling outside the formal scheme and thus encourage the export of WEEE abroad. We must therefore continue to ask the question, is Japan’s recycling cost truly high, and, if so, why? Let us examine this issue through a comparison with the EU.
578 CHAPTER 21 WEEE management in Japan
Although the direct costs incurred in recycling household appliances are not publicly released, Japan’s Recycling System Review Council has issued a report, “On the Transparency of Recycling Fees” (Joint Meeting, 2007, Table 21.1), and each year the AEHA publishes the recycling amounts collected and the number of units recycled, whereas information on WEEE in the EU comes from estimates by type of product based on cost data collected by the WEEE Forum and other bodies (UNU, 2007, Table 21.2). Calculations based on this information show that in 2005 Japan’s costs were 20%e60% higher than those in the EU (see Table 21.2). In the context of Japan’s Household Appliance Recycling Law, one therefore cannot overlook the fact that, at the least, nearly 20 billion JPY (20 million USD) in tax money has been invested in this task.
Table 21.1 Recycling fees for televisions, refrigerators, air conditioners, and washing machines in Japan (2001 and 2014)
Air conditioners TVs Refrigerators Washing machines
2001
2014
2014
3675 JPY 2835 JPY 4830 JPY 2520 JPY
1620 JPY 2916 JPY (large) 4968 JPY (large) 2592 JPY
1836 JPY (small) 3888 JPY (small)
Based on Source: AEHA, 2016. Annual Report. Association for Electric Home Appliances, Japan.
Table 21.2 Total cost per ton of recycling in 2005 for Japan and the European Union (1 euro ¼ 137 JPY) TVs (1 t [ 36 units)
Refrigerators (1 t [ 17 units)
Air conditioners (1 t [ 23 units)
112,608 JPY (1024 USD) 116,604 JPY (1059 USD)
100,045 JPY (909 USD) 108,494 JPY (1067 USD)
81,305 JPY (744 USD) 89,194 JPY (748 USD)
TVs
Refrigerators and air conditioners
72,336 JPY (658 USD) 85,077 JPY (773 USD)
75,409 JPY (685 USD) 111,107 JPY (1010 USD)
Japan Group A Group B EU
EU average Maximum
Based on Sources: AEHA, 2009. Annual Report. Association for Electric Home Appliances, Japan, UNU (United Nations University), 2007. Review of Directive 2002/96 on WEEE, Final Report. UNU, Bonn.
21.4 Cost and recycling quality 579
We offer the following reasons to explain why Japan’s recycling costs are higher than those of the EU. In the first place, the system’s very structure makes it costly. Because consumers are required to pay recycling fees when they turn in an old appliance, management costs, which are processed through a manifest system, are levied to ensure the traceability of each item. Although the collection management cost in the EU is about 40% of total costs, in Japan, the collection management cost is nearly 50%. One of the EU countries, the Netherlands, has done well by charging visible fees to provide the initial investments for setting up the recycling infrastructure, such as facilities for recovery and processing; whereas, in Japan, the two groups, A and B (see above), which are partnerships entered into by the manufacturers, conduct collection management and processing independently of each other, and the redundant investment prevents economies of scale. A further reason is that the heavy involvement of Japanese producers in the task of recycling makes capital investment that much higher. Furthermore, just at a time when the EU is mechanizing its operations to lower costs, Japan is still relying on manual disassembly as well as mechanization to raise the recycling rate. Whereas the EU limits manual disassembly mainly to the removal of hazardous items, Japan has made considerable investments in actually expanding manual disassembly processes to raise the plastic recycling rate, and in the development of technologies and facilities for plastic sorting. Yet, when we examined how recovered plastic is used by Japanese producers, we found that its use in new products is restricted, because even if there is no problem with quality, it would be likely to hamper product sales. Consequently, recovered plastic is only used when, for example, it is mixed, in quantities of about 20%, with virgin materials, and only in parts that are not externally obvious, or for those internal parts of refrigerators that do not come into contact with food. In the EU, on the other hand, even plastic that is incinerated is counted toward the recovery rate. A third issue concerns the matter of recycling quality and cost. Because Japan’s regulations guarantee the recycling charge, manufacturers ask for higher recycling rates without needing to indulge in price competition, thus making the actual rate higher than that legally required. The legal and actual rates are, respectively, 70% and 93% for air conditioners, 55% and 90% for TVs, 60% and 82% for refrigerators, and 65% and 90% for washing machines (2015). Some observers believe that because of the heavy involvement of producers in processing, Japan is demonstrating its strong design for environment (DfE) feedback, and it is true that there has been a certain degree of progress in this area, particularly in terms of ease of dismantlement and the aforementioned recovery and in the use of
580 CHAPTER 21 WEEE management in Japan
plastic; but design has a lower priority than the need for energy-saving performance and the avoidance of hazardous substances, and this is a drawback. In the EU, on the other hand, producers are not directly concerned with the business of recycling itself. Instead, individual producers or members of the joint scheme enter into individual contracts with specialized recycling companies. Although under this arrangement the principle of cost competition works reasonably well, the feedback to DfE and the like is rather weak. More meaningful in terms of DfE are such different schemes as the RoHS and the energy-using product directives. Yet, although the regulations have led to an increase in the amounts of collected waste and processors have benefited from the larger scale, producers have been inclined to hold down processing costs because high-quality discarded equipment is hard to find, and some experts observe that the current recycling quality has actually tended to be lower than before the directive was implemented (Svensson et al., 2005). In response to this weakness, Sony, HP, and Electrolux set up the European Recycling Platform, and certainly, in the case of office machinery, individual producer responsibility can be feasible and can contribute to the DfE achieved by these companies; in the case of many consumer appliances, however, this model is still not capable of working well. Even so, producers are checking and controlling the processors’ management procedures more rigorously and are working within the terms of the environmental regulations more than in the past (Kheitriwal et al., 2009). In view of all this, we need to reconsider the cost of recycling and its possible benefits, in terms of both the environment and the economy. Now, in response to a report submitted by Japan’s home appliance Recycling System Review Council, and against the backdrop of recent steep price increases for natural resources, consumer appliance/electronics makers are leaning toward the lowering of recycling fees, down in the case of air conditioners, for example, as much as 17%. The special reason for the lowering of recycling fees of air conditioners is the pricing up of the recycled copper from air conditioners.
21.5 EXPORT PROBLEMS Both Japan and the EU have serious problems with the dispatch of WEEE to other countries. In Japan, newly issued trade statistics reveals that used CRT-TV (HS code: 8528.72900) exported in 2009 accounted for 2,290,717 units, to the value of 1,888,333 000 JPY, at an average price of 824 JPY per unit. The chief importing countries are Vietnam
21.5 Export problems 581
(794,201 units), the Philippines (481,698 units), China (22,285 units), and Indonesia (91,245 units). As about 9,213,000 units were formally recycled in 2009, we reckon that, compared to the amounts recycled domestically, about 25% are exported. In the case of used PCs, research carried out in 2008 by the Japan Electronics and information Technology Industries Association estimated that the number of discarded PCs in 2006 had been about 9.08 million units, of which 0.68 million units were recycled by manufacturer recycling facilities, 0.14 million units by municipalities, 2.60 million units by independent waste management companies, while 1.34 million units were sold domestically, 1.24 million units were exported for reuse, and 1.85 units were exported for scrap. This means that the formal collecting system (manufacturers and municipalities) covers only about 10% of used PCs. Economic principles dictate that as long as discarded PCs have market value and the domestic used PC market is saturated, and even if reuse is encouraged and a domestic take-back system is created, it will naturally follow that discarded PCs will be exported rather than enter the domestic recycling/reuse channels, whereas, at the same time and because of wide income differences between countries and areas, PCs will be widely subjected to cascade use. In Thailand, for example, where used PCs from the country’s own domestic market do not satisfy the demand among the middle- and low-income class buyers, the supply of imported PCs is subjected to reuse and they are rebuilt. The chief concern, however, centers on what happens to those PCs after the importing countries have, in their turn, discarded them. If Information and Communication Technology (ICT) for environment is to be promulgated, then, quite apart from taking care of the WEEE, the business style for the original mass production and mass sales of electrical goods has to be changed. Recently the export of used PC monitors (HS code:852851900) is increasing instead of used CRT TVs; in 2016, about 2 million units were exported to Hong Kong, China, Macau, the Philippines, and Thailand (Table 21.3). Although the EU has approved the Basel Convention amendments, which virtually ban exports of WEEE, Japan has yet to follow suit. Unfortunately, the reality of international resource recycling practices, which lack any specific controls, entails that the industrialized countries cannot process their hazardous wastes at home, and so, by making the developing countries take the responsibility for dealing with it, they are themselves responsible for damaging human health as well as the environment (BAN/SVTC, 2002).
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Table 21.3 Export of used PC monitors (HS code:852851900) from Japan in 2016 Country (units)
Value (1000 JPY)
Average unit value (JPY)
Hong Kong 901,937 China 535,012 Macau 202,700 Philippines 138,521 Thailand 66,461
1,123,780 744,856 181,337 220,757 125,840
1245 1392 895 1594 1893
Based on Source: Japan Trade Statistics.
Because the EU Review Report recommends banning illegal shipments of exported waste, it obviously needs to strengthen its export controls on scrapped consumer equipment when these violate the Basel Convention; at the same time, when a developing country such as China, which has environmental problems but also a great demand for resources and a need for imported goods, has installed building facilities for imported scrap disassembly and appropriate processing under the supervision of customs and environmental protection agencies, it becomes necessary to consider the creation of institutions under whose umbrella producers are able to engage in active cooperation and involvement in construction and operation. Although the technologies developed under the recycling systems of Japan and the EU need to be transferred to developing countries, the high-cost constitution of Japan’s recycling technologies will remain a stumbling block, and the appropriate domestic treatment of WEEE will be the duty of the developed countries (Yoshida and Yoshida, 2008).
21.6 ECONOMIC ANALYSIS FOR URBAN MINING According to the estimation carried out by the National Institute of Material Science (released on January 11, 2008), of the quantity of metals that had accumulated in Japan to be recycled (in short, the content of the manmade urban mining), gold amounts to about 6800 tons (16% of world reserves), silver comes to 60,000 tons (22%), indium (16%), tin (11%), and tantalum (10%). Although many of these metals exceed more than 10% of the world reserves, they have not yet been collected. Instead, they are stored and some of them are shipped to other countries. The research conducted by the National Institute of Material Science has not confirmed the location of all the collections of recyclable material that have been designated as
21.6 Economic analysis for urban mining 583
constituting urban mining, and although the data has been estimated on the basis of governmental trade or production statistics, it is still not clear whether it is the fate of the metals to be scattered in the air, oxidized, or buried in the waste landfill. Nor is the grade of urban mining at all clear. Consequently, it remains necessary to clarify the form in which they currently exist (Halada et al., 2009). As to the electronics products, the generated amount of WEEE is estimated to be 2,500,000 tons/year (19.4 kg per capita). Among them, the smaller items of electrical equipment amount to around 500,000 tons/year, while the quantity of metals included in such small WEEE is estimated to be around 1000e10,000 tons for base metals like copper and lead, and around 10 tons for precious metals in a scattered condition (Shiratori and Nakamura, 2007). The main material of the nonferrous metal industry consists of industrial byproducts, termed industrial waste, and this is enough to keep it in operation and the quality homogeneous. For example, the quantity of materials input in the top submerged lance (TSL) furnace at DOWA’s Kosaka refinery, opened in 2007, is sufficient to keep the furnace operational and the quality of the input stable. The main materials are waste water sludge, electronics scrap, metal plate waste solution, used mercury oxide cells, lead frames, control boards, PCs, and connector boards. Throughout Japan, the waste electronics material constitutes only 4% of the recycling material of the nonferrous metal industry (Kozan, 2009). We thus see that the nonferrous metal industries are carrying on their business by unifying the collection of metal and the treatment of waste, and that, within the total amount of WEEE that constitutes the mass of urban mining, the scrap that is to be mined, the percentage by weight of cellular phones is very small. According to the report published by the Ministry of Public Management, Home Affairs, Post and Telecommunications (2009), the metal price recoverable from one cellular phone is about 100 JPY (¼ Japanese Yen) (in case of gold, 0.03 g 2920 JPY/g ¼ 87.6 JPY). The recycling cost is therefore reduced, and the real price of one phone is some 1e10 JPY. On the basis of this estimation, we can predict that if cellular phones were to be collected from each of the 120 million people living in Japan, the amount of gold they contained would be worth about 10 billion JPY. For the making of gold medals for the Tokyo Olympic games in 2020, a campaign to collect used cellular phones has started. It is estimated that 8 million cellular phone units will be required to make the gold, silver, and copper medals for the Tokyo Olympic games. By 2016, about 3 million units have been collected.
584 CHAPTER 21 WEEE management in Japan
The reason why we focus attention on cellular and PCs as types of urban mining, is the expanding and high speed of technological innovation of high-tech products on the one hand and supply restrictions on the other. In order to obtain a better picture of the collection and recycling of rare metals, the Japanese Ministry of Environment and the Ministry of Economy and Trade and Industry set up a research committee, and since 2009 it has been carrying out a model business in Japan. (DOWA and three other entities are cooperating in the project.) The model business has already published its first results: the cellular phone has had the highest collection rate, about 14% (collection units per potential collection units), while the average collection rate of a total of nine items (game machines, DVDs, digital cameras, etc.) has reached 10.9%. Although the estimated total of the nine items (84 million units per year) will contain 353 tons of rare metals per year, this figure accounts for only 0.2% of the total quantity of imported rare metals. Since the recovery rate at the smelter is about 60%, this means that if the collection of rare metal, combined with the recovery of the base metal and precious metal, is only of the order of 30%, then the benefitecost ratio will become 1. This means that the economic conditions of the rare metal collection business are very severe, and that a high collection rate of over 30% and the development of a more sophisticated extraction technology are therefore indispensable. When we consider the collection cost per unit, we may conclude that the methods of collection, recovery, and recycling of WEEE and end-of-life vehicle (ELV) offer a possible solution, for as well as an effective system of collection of WEEE and ELV, the research and development technology for dismantling and sorting plays a role of critical importance. For example, Shin-Etsu Chemicals, one of the Japanese producers of the Nd-Fe-B permanent magnet, has developed recovery and recycling technology for extracting neodymium and dysprosium from motors in the compressors of used air conditioners. It is estimated that if 70% of the air conditioners and washing machines in use in Japan are recycled, the amounts of rare metal magnet can, by 2030, amount to 410 tons. But it is necessary to further develop the dismantling and recycling technology (Arai, 2010). The Japanese government introduced the recycling system for small home appliances to recover and recycle rare metals in 2012. Targets may be cellular phones, game machines, digital cameras, video cameras, DVD players, microwave ovens, etc. Municipalities have to collect them, and also retailers have to set up collection boxes. After collection and special treatment of private information, recyclers recover rare metals from them.
21.6 Economic analysis for urban mining 585
On the basis of these analyses, we can summarize the economic conditions of urban mining under three headings. The first concerns the system of collection. WEEE is both diffusely scattered and movable, despite its potential accumulation, and the creation of a collection system for WEEE is an important condition for enabling the items to be recycled. The four items (TV, washing machine, refrigerator, air conditioner) are regulated and collected by Japan’s Home Appliance Recycling Law, while the Law for Promoting Effective Use of Resources permits PCs to be taken back without charge. Nevertheless, the collection rate is not sufficiently high since used PCs have their own market value. The second condition is the development of technology by individual private companies. Our examples show that nonferrous metal recycling companies must have high-level technological and R&D capability in unifying the waste treatment and the resource recovery, and technology for the appropriate analysis of WEEE that contains complex materials becomes the base for the evaluation of the metals and the cost of their treatment. The TSL furnace of DOWA and Mitsui’s lithium ion battery recycling are instances of companies responding within the current regulations to the development and deployment of new technologies of R&D. We also require both the recovery of precious metals in general and special metals such as mercury and cadmium in particular (Hagellueken, 2009). The collection and treatment of liquid crystal displays, video players, and new types of batteries become new business opportunities for companies. At the same time, not only do the Japanese companies’ environmental technology, management systems, and human development projectsdwhich are designed to cope with serious mining pollutiondcompare well with those of other countries but they have also acquired a good social reputation and many customers in and out of Japan, while being favorably noted for strong international competitiveness. The third condition concerns the demand-side problem of metals. In the countries that we have studied, price fluctuations for virgin resources constitute a major influence upon the recycling of resources. The price of virgin materials affects the fluctuation of foreign exchange, and excludes such external costs as environmental disruption, the need for subsidies, all in competition with the recycled material (Yoshida, 2004). The economic condition will depend on the costs incurred for collection, decomposition, and disposal, as compared with the prices of virgin resources. Consequently, it may be possible to focus on economically valuable resources and the application of appropriate technology for the
586 CHAPTER 21 WEEE management in Japan
disposal of complicated ores. Since 2008, when metal market prices fell sharply because of the world financial crisis, this has become more necessary than ever. It is essential that the nonferrous metal industry should succeed in stabilizing the diversity of the input material and the prices of the output product (metal). It is vitally important to raise the recovery rate of precious metal so as to cope with the dangerous fluctuations in the ultimate prices of finished goods.
21.7 CONCLUSIONS Our analysis of the distinctive WEEE recycling systems operated by Japan has shown that, in the light of the systems’ purposes and contexts, we need to reconsider cost and performance as well as the role of each of the individual actors. We consider that neither system is obviously better than the other, and that they face similar challenges to the achievement of their ultimate goals. Those challenges include the raising of collection rates, the allocation of costs, the involvement of municipalities, recycling cost/benefits, the relationship between EPR and DfE, and the drain of WEEE exports to developing countries. In particular, the key to the raising of the collection rate lies in providing an incentive for proper collection and in making it convenient for the consumer to abide by the adopted scheme. If municipalities are involved, the collection cost has to be paid. Our findings have also revealed that the retailer’s role is particularly important. The payment of a recycling fee at the time of discarding curbs the collection rate, which must be the real target. The visible fee, or the advance fee payment, does not curb the purchasing power and can contribute to the construction of the infrastructure. In the case of many home appliances, EPR cannot work well, and the appropriate domestic treatment of WEEE will be the duty of the developed countries. Our findings lead us to make the following recommendations: n
n
n
If Japan hopes to increase its collection rate of WEEE to any substantial degree, it has to change its system from one where payment is made at the time of disposal to one where payment is made in advance. Because the consumers have to pay at the time of disposal, the cost and the quality of recycling within the Japanese system is too expensive and must be reduced. To oversee and amend the problems occasioned by the cross-border problems of WEEE, Japan needs a common agenda and the framework to set up a fund that will enable it to cooperate in the collection and treatment of cross-border recycling.
References 587
n
The regulations that forbid mixing small WEEE with MSW will contribute not only to environmental protection but also to the business opportunities and green employment. Thus, to build the collection system and to raise the collection rate of the specified four items and PCs and cellular phones, we need to improve the collection system by involving the participation of producers, retailers, consumers, and waste treatment businesses, and by introducing such incentive systems as the deposit.
In the context of the quite unprecedented changes that are now afflicting the global economy, these questions take on a new and disturbing urgency. Instead of simply organizing a WEEE recycling system meant to clean up after the consequences of mass production, mass consumption, and mass disposal, we now need a far more painstaking and balanced assessment of the issues that will cover all their environmental, economic, and social aspects, especially as they relate to each other, for if we hope to see worldwide sustainable development, it is essential that governments design systems that are meant to mitigate environmental and social burdens and reduce the consumption of natural resources by a far more effective management of WEEE.
REFERENCES AEHA, 2016. Annual Report. Association for Electric Home Appliances, Japan. AEHA, 2009. Annual Report. Association for Electric Home Appliances, Japan. Aizawa, H., Yoshida, H., Sakai, S., 2008. Current results and future perspectives for Japanese recycling of home electrical appliances. Resources, Conservation and Recycling 52, 1399. Arai, Y., 2010. Recycling of rare metal from WEEE. In: Conference on Rare Metal Recycling by the Waste Management Association, Tokyo, 9 July. BAN/SVTC, 2002. Exporting Harm: The High-tech Trashing of Asia (Seattle: Basel Action Network/San Jose: Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition). Council, Waste and Recycling Committee, Subcommittee for Assessing the Household Appliance Recycling System, 2007. On the Transparency of Recycling Fees. In: 7th Joint Meeting, 6 March. Tokyo. CWIT, 2015. Countering WEEE Illegal Trade Summary Report. Hagellueken, C., 2009. Technology challenges to recovery precious and special metals from complex products. In: R’09 and twin World Congress, Davos. Halada, K., Ijima, K., Shimada, M., Katagiri, N., 2009. A possibility of urban mining in Japan. Journal of the Japan Institute of Metals 73, 151e160. Hosoda, E., 2007. International aspects of recycling of electrical and electronic equipment: material circulation in the East Asian region. Journal of Material Cycles and Waste Management 9, 140. Jofre, S., Morioka, T., 2005. Waste management of electric and electronic equipment: comparative analysis of end-of-life strategies. Journal of Material Cycles and Waste Management 7, 24.
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Joint Meeting of the Industrial Structure Council, Subcommittee on Waste and Recycling, Electrical and Electronic Equipment Working Group, Central Environment Council, Waste and Recycling Committee, Subcommittee for Assessing the Household Appliance Recycling System, 2008a. Report on the Assessment and Examination of the Implementation Status of the Household Appliance Recycling System (in Japanese). Tokyo. Joint Meeting of the Industrial Structure Council, Subcommittee on Waste and Recycling, Electrical and Electronic Equipment Working Group, Central Environment Council, Waste and Recycling Committee, Subcommittee for Assessing the Household Appliance Recycling System, 2014. Estimation of Flow of WEEE in Japan (2012). Kheitrival, D.S., Krauchi, P., Winder, R., 2009. Producer responsibility for e-waste management: key issues for consideration. Journal of Environmental Management 90 (1), 153e165. Kozan, 2009. No. 667, p. 37 (General view of Japanese mining). Ministry of Public Management, Home Affairs, Post and Telecommunications, 2009. The Report on the Ecological Response in the Field of Information and Telecommunication, Part III. Tokyo. OKOPOL/IIIEE/RPA (Okopol GmbH Institute for Environmental Strategies/The International Insitute for Industrial Environmental Economics, Lund University/Risk & PolicyAnalysts), 2007. The Producer Responsibility Principle of the WEEE Directive. Final Report. OKOPOL, Hamburg. Shiratori, T., Nakamura, T., 2007. Artificial ore deposit design(II). Journal Mining and Materials Processing Institute of Japan 123, 171e178. Svensson, R., Engkvist, L., Eklund, J., Bjorkman, M., Eklund, M., 2005. Identified risks at Swedish recycling centres during handling of waste from electric and electronic equipment. Proceedings of Environmentally Conscious Design and Inverse Manufacturing 2005, 951. Tasaki, T., 2006. An Assessment of the Actual Effectiveness of the Household Appliance Recycling Law. National Institute for Environmental Studies, Tsukuba. Terazono, A., Moriguchi, Y., Yoshida, A., Kojima, M., 2006. Current status and research on E-waste issues in Asia. Journal of Material Cycles and Waste Management 8, 1. UNU (United Nations University), 2007. Review of Directive 2002/96 on WEEE. Final Report. UNU, Bonn. Yoshida, F., 2004. Jyankan Gata Shakai. Chuo Koron Shinsha. Yoshida, F., 2005. Cyclical Economy of Japan. Hokkaido University Press, Japan. Yoshida, F., Yoshida, H., 2008. The circular economy of China: focusing on metal recycling and WEEE recycling (in Japanese). Review of Environmental Economics and Policy 1, 14. Zheng, L., Wu, K., Li, Y., Qi, Z., Han, B., Zhang, C., Gu, G., 2008. Blood lead and cadmium levels and relevant factors among children from e-waste recycling town in China. Environmental Research 108, 15.
Further reading 589
FURTHER READING JEITA, 2008. Research Report on Recovery, Treatment and Recycling of IT Equipments. Japan Electronics and Information Technology Industries Association, Japan. Joint Meeting of the Industrial Structure Council, Subcommittee on Waste and Recycling, Electrical and Electronic Equipment Working Group, and Central Environment. Joint Meeting of the Industrial Structure Council, Subcommittee on Waste and Recycling, Electrical and Electronic Equipment Working Group, Central Environment Council, Waste and Recycling Committee, Subcommittee for Assessing the Household Appliance Recycling System, 2008b. The Survey of the Take-back for the Used 4 Items (Home Appliances) by Retailers During April to June 2008, Tokyo.
21
WEEE management in Japan
Fumikazu Yoshida1, Haruyo Yoshida2 1
Aichi Gakuin University, Nagoya, Japan; 2Sapporo University, Sapporo, Japan
CHAPTER OUTLINE
21.1 Introduction 573 21.2 Japan’s home appliance recycling system: purpose and background 21.3 The collection rate 576 21.4 Cost and recycling quality 577 21.5 Export problems 580 21.6 Economic analysis for urban mining 582 21.7 Conclusions 586 References 587 Further reading 589
574
21.1 INTRODUCTION The acronym WEEE (waste electronic and electrical equipment) signifies a relatively new category of waste type, a category that includes precious metals as well as such toxic substances as lead and polybrominated biphenyls, and one whose components require separate sorting and special treatment for waste management. The cost of processing discarded WEEE is probably the motivating factor in shipping it to countries where the labor is cheaper and health and safety regulations are not stringently enforced. If the treatment process is not supervised under proper safety conditions, it may ultimately cause serious air pollution, contamination of the soil and groundwater pollution, as when, for instance, strong acids are used for metal extraction and burning used wire (BAN/SVTC, 2002; Yoshida and Yoshida, 2008; Zheng et al., 2008). To tackle such problems as these, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has proposed that countries should adopt the extended producers responsibility (EPR) principle, and the European Union (EU), for one, has implemented the WEEE and restriction of hazardous substances (RoHS) directives to collect WEEE separately from other municipal solid waste (MSW) and to manage it with the participation of producers (financially and/or Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Handbook. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-102158-3.00021-5 Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
573
574 CHAPTER 21 WEEE management in Japan
physically). Between 2001 and 2005, countries such as Japan and the member countries of the EU, introduced the EPR principle into their WEEE recycling systems. The purpose of this chapter is to draw lessons from the ways in which developed countries, in this case Japan, are managing to deal with WEEE. Japan launched its own WEEE recycling system in 2001, and 11 years later the Japanese government conducted a second review of how the system was working; it released its final report, based on documents submitted by Japan’s Home Appliance Recycling System Review Council, in February 2014. The present authors were able to conduct a study of Japan as developed countries with respect to the achievements and challenges of their WEEE recycling systems; we focused on three dimensions: (1) material flow analysis, (2) regime-actor analysis, and (3) economic analysis, which the study of circular economy requires (see Yoshida, 2005). Previous studies of WEEE have focused on the main upon aspects of the material flow (Jofre and Morioka, 2005; Tasaki, 2006; Terazono et al., 2006) or on an analysis of the economic features (Hosoda, 2007). Here, we attempt to analyze the WEEE recycling system through a focus on a combination of four interrelated issues: (1) the need to improve the collection rate of WEEE, (2) questions of the cost and the quality of recycling, (3) the problems of cross-border recycling, and (4) economic aspects of “urban mining” related to WEEE. This review looks at, in order: (1) the systemic character of WEEE recycling in Japan, (2) the collection rate, (3) the cost and the quality of the recycling, (4) the problems raised by the export of WEEE, and (5) the urban mining agenda.
21.2 JAPAN’S HOME APPLIANCE RECYCLING SYSTEM: PURPOSE AND BACKGROUND Japan’s consumer equipment recycling system requires that consumers pay a recycling fee when discarding any one of four equipment types (TVs, air conditioners, refrigerators, and washing machines), that retailers take them back, and that producers recycle them. Two problems were the basis for the successful creation of Japan’s home appliance recycling system: the shortage of landfill space and the need for the recovery and use of resources. A characteristic of the system is that Japanese municipalities do not, as is the case in some other countries, themselves perform the collection and processing operations for recycling. The recycling fee and fund is managed by the Association for Electric Home Appliances (AEHA, 2016), while collection and processing are carried out under a producer partnership system that
21.2 Japan’s home appliance recycling system: purpose and background 575
is divided between Group A (Panasonic, Toshiba, and others) and Group B (Mitsubishi, Hitachi, and others). As for small electronics items (including personal computers [PCs] and cellular phones), a different recycling system was introduced in 2013. This system designated 28 items and each municipality decides on the collection items. The recyclers have to get permission for each collection and recycling of items from the central government. In 2013, for used PCs of 17.80 million units, about 6.55 million were transferred overseas for reuse or recycling. As for cellular phones, about 40% of 36 million used units are privately stored and collected and recycled, about 896 tons by the mobile recycling network, and 117 tons by municipalities (Fig. 21.1). In contrast, the EU regulations (1) cover a broad range of products, (2) assign responsibility and costs to producers, (3) establish collection targets and recycling rates, and (4) limit the use of hazardous substances. Their purpose is to build a system that, by these means, recovers WEEE separately rather than disposing of it as municipal solid waste (OKOPOL/IIIEE/RPA, 2007). In reality, however, in Europe only 35% (3.3 million tons) of all the e-waste discarded in 2012 ended up in the officially reported amounts of collection and recycling systems according to the Countering WEEE Illegal Trade Summary
Outlet 576,000 ton/year
Home 95.8%
C to C reuse 15.0% Municipality solid waste Municipality 62.4% Retailer 5.6% Town collector 13.3%
Office 4.2%
Landfill by municipality 52%
Recycler & resource collector Secondhand dealer & exporter
Domestic smelter 21.6% Reuse market: Domestic 10.2% Abroad 6.6%
Oversea scrap 0.3%
n FIGURE 21.1 Estimation of e-waste flow from used small-size electronics in 2013.
576 CHAPTER 21 WEEE management in Japan
Report (2015). The other 65% (6.15 million tons) was either: exported (1.5 million tons), recycled under noncompliant conditions in Europe (3.15 million tons), scavenged for valuable parts (750,000 tons), or simply thrown in waste bins (750,000 tons).
21.3 THE COLLECTION RATE What has Japan achieved so far? Previously, only valuable metals were recovered from discarded household appliances, and the great majority was then land-filled; now, under the new system, introduced in 2001, about half of all discarded appliances are treated after collection. Newest data is from 2012: n
n
n
n
Amounts collected and treated: 17.02 million units treatment per year, 0.468 million tons treatment per year, about 3.7 kg per capita of the four items. The numbers of collected units started in 2001 increased from 8.3 million units and 0.32 million tons to 17.02 million units and 0.468 million tons in 2012 (Joint Meeting, 2014). Material recovered: 0.39 million tons per year; this does not include payment to recyclers for accepting waste. Effects on the environment: reduction of landfill (extended for the remaining years from 12.8 years in 2001 to 14.8 years in 2006), recovery and treatment of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) (about 1458 tons in 2012), management of hazardous substances. Design for the environment: long-life design, design for easy disassembly and for the recovery of plastics (Aizawa et al., 2008; Joint Meeting, 2008a).
Reviews of the Japanese systems have found that increasing the collection rate is a vital requirement. In Japan, 17.02 million of an estimated 22 million units are taken back by retail stores, of which, 11 million units are recycled by their producers, while the rest disappear in an “invisible flow”; and while the primary collection rate at retail stores is 75%, the final processing rate drops to 50%. The main reason is that of the 9.7 million units taken back by retailers, as many as 3.8 million discarded appliances enter channels outside the system. No recycling fees have been paid for these appliances, and they are not taken to the processing facilities of producers or other parties (see Fig. 21.2). Furthermore, because Japan’s WEEE recycling system is built around recycling, there is no place in its policy for reuse. Because another underlying factor is the high recycling fee that consumers must pay when turning in an appliance, the authorities, fearful that these conditions would lead to illegal dumping, have considered switching to a system for advance fee payment. Items taken back free of charge go abroad, whereas
21.4 Cost and recycling quality 577
Outlet 18 million units Home & office
Retailor 9.4 million units
Formal recycling by manufactures 11 million units
Reuse market 7 million units Domestic 1-2 million Abroad 1 million
Town collector secondhand dealer 4.8 million units Illegal 0.11 million
Resource recovery by informal sector 5.56 million units Municipality
n FIGURE 21.2 Estimation of e-waste flow from large-size home electronics 2015.
items that are paid for enter the domestic used market, although this means that the route from the retailers to points of sale for domestic reuse is decreasing dramatically. Consequently, the route taken by the buyers seems to play a major role in determining reuse or material recovery. In 2016, the used CRT (color TV, HS code 852872900) of 0.547 million units are exported to Thailand and 0.171 million units to the Philippines (Trade Statistics of Japan). As for the Japanese system, more positive options that would serve to raise the collection rate are: (1) free take-back when a product is discarded, (2) the use by municipalities of the agreed collection channels, and (3) paying for the collection. By combining (1) and (2), Korea has achieved a higher collection rate than Japan, as well as including a wider range of categories among the collected items.
21.4 COST AND RECYCLING QUALITY Although some have claimed that the high cost of Japan’s recycling process can in part be explained by the recycling fees customers must pay when turning in an old piece of equipment, the producers, who are responsible for WEEE processing, seek to rebut this criticism with the counterclaim that the quality of recycling is also high. Nevertheless, the problems caused by the high cost of recycling could lead to recycling outside the formal scheme and thus encourage the export of WEEE abroad. We must therefore continue to ask the question, is Japan’s recycling cost truly high, and, if so, why? Let us examine this issue through a comparison with the EU.
578 CHAPTER 21 WEEE management in Japan
Although the direct costs incurred in recycling household appliances are not publicly released, Japan’s Recycling System Review Council has issued a report, “On the Transparency of Recycling Fees” (Joint Meeting, 2007, Table 21.1), and each year the AEHA publishes the recycling amounts collected and the number of units recycled, whereas information on WEEE in the EU comes from estimates by type of product based on cost data collected by the WEEE Forum and other bodies (UNU, 2007, Table 21.2). Calculations based on this information show that in 2005 Japan’s costs were 20%e60% higher than those in the EU (see Table 21.2). In the context of Japan’s Household Appliance Recycling Law, one therefore cannot overlook the fact that, at the least, nearly 20 billion JPY (20 million USD) in tax money has been invested in this task.
Table 21.1 Recycling fees for televisions, refrigerators, air conditioners, and washing machines in Japan (2001 and 2014)
Air conditioners TVs Refrigerators Washing machines
2001
2014
2014
3675 JPY 2835 JPY 4830 JPY 2520 JPY
1620 JPY 2916 JPY (large) 4968 JPY (large) 2592 JPY
1836 JPY (small) 3888 JPY (small)
Based on Source: AEHA, 2016. Annual Report. Association for Electric Home Appliances, Japan.
Table 21.2 Total cost per ton of recycling in 2005 for Japan and the European Union (1 euro ¼ 137 JPY) TVs (1 t [ 36 units)
Refrigerators (1 t [ 17 units)
Air conditioners (1 t [ 23 units)
112,608 JPY (1024 USD) 116,604 JPY (1059 USD)
100,045 JPY (909 USD) 108,494 JPY (1067 USD)
81,305 JPY (744 USD) 89,194 JPY (748 USD)
TVs
Refrigerators and air conditioners
72,336 JPY (658 USD) 85,077 JPY (773 USD)
75,409 JPY (685 USD) 111,107 JPY (1010 USD)
Japan Group A Group B EU
EU average Maximum
Based on Sources: AEHA, 2009. Annual Report. Association for Electric Home Appliances, Japan, UNU (United Nations University), 2007. Review of Directive 2002/96 on WEEE, Final Report. UNU, Bonn.
21.4 Cost and recycling quality 579
We offer the following reasons to explain why Japan’s recycling costs are higher than those of the EU. In the first place, the system’s very structure makes it costly. Because consumers are required to pay recycling fees when they turn in an old appliance, management costs, which are processed through a manifest system, are levied to ensure the traceability of each item. Although the collection management cost in the EU is about 40% of total costs, in Japan, the collection management cost is nearly 50%. One of the EU countries, the Netherlands, has done well by charging visible fees to provide the initial investments for setting up the recycling infrastructure, such as facilities for recovery and processing; whereas, in Japan, the two groups, A and B (see above), which are partnerships entered into by the manufacturers, conduct collection management and processing independently of each other, and the redundant investment prevents economies of scale. A further reason is that the heavy involvement of Japanese producers in the task of recycling makes capital investment that much higher. Furthermore, just at a time when the EU is mechanizing its operations to lower costs, Japan is still relying on manual disassembly as well as mechanization to raise the recycling rate. Whereas the EU limits manual disassembly mainly to the removal of hazardous items, Japan has made considerable investments in actually expanding manual disassembly processes to raise the plastic recycling rate, and in the development of technologies and facilities for plastic sorting. Yet, when we examined how recovered plastic is used by Japanese producers, we found that its use in new products is restricted, because even if there is no problem with quality, it would be likely to hamper product sales. Consequently, recovered plastic is only used when, for example, it is mixed, in quantities of about 20%, with virgin materials, and only in parts that are not externally obvious, or for those internal parts of refrigerators that do not come into contact with food. In the EU, on the other hand, even plastic that is incinerated is counted toward the recovery rate. A third issue concerns the matter of recycling quality and cost. Because Japan’s regulations guarantee the recycling charge, manufacturers ask for higher recycling rates without needing to indulge in price competition, thus making the actual rate higher than that legally required. The legal and actual rates are, respectively, 70% and 93% for air conditioners, 55% and 90% for TVs, 60% and 82% for refrigerators, and 65% and 90% for washing machines (2015). Some observers believe that because of the heavy involvement of producers in processing, Japan is demonstrating its strong design for environment (DfE) feedback, and it is true that there has been a certain degree of progress in this area, particularly in terms of ease of dismantlement and the aforementioned recovery and in the use of
580 CHAPTER 21 WEEE management in Japan
plastic; but design has a lower priority than the need for energy-saving performance and the avoidance of hazardous substances, and this is a drawback. In the EU, on the other hand, producers are not directly concerned with the business of recycling itself. Instead, individual producers or members of the joint scheme enter into individual contracts with specialized recycling companies. Although under this arrangement the principle of cost competition works reasonably well, the feedback to DfE and the like is rather weak. More meaningful in terms of DfE are such different schemes as the RoHS and the energy-using product directives. Yet, although the regulations have led to an increase in the amounts of collected waste and processors have benefited from the larger scale, producers have been inclined to hold down processing costs because high-quality discarded equipment is hard to find, and some experts observe that the current recycling quality has actually tended to be lower than before the directive was implemented (Svensson et al., 2005). In response to this weakness, Sony, HP, and Electrolux set up the European Recycling Platform, and certainly, in the case of office machinery, individual producer responsibility can be feasible and can contribute to the DfE achieved by these companies; in the case of many consumer appliances, however, this model is still not capable of working well. Even so, producers are checking and controlling the processors’ management procedures more rigorously and are working within the terms of the environmental regulations more than in the past (Kheitriwal et al., 2009). In view of all this, we need to reconsider the cost of recycling and its possible benefits, in terms of both the environment and the economy. Now, in response to a report submitted by Japan’s home appliance Recycling System Review Council, and against the backdrop of recent steep price increases for natural resources, consumer appliance/electronics makers are leaning toward the lowering of recycling fees, down in the case of air conditioners, for example, as much as 17%. The special reason for the lowering of recycling fees of air conditioners is the pricing up of the recycled copper from air conditioners.
21.5 EXPORT PROBLEMS Both Japan and the EU have serious problems with the dispatch of WEEE to other countries. In Japan, newly issued trade statistics reveals that used CRT-TV (HS code: 8528.72900) exported in 2009 accounted for 2,290,717 units, to the value of 1,888,333 000 JPY, at an average price of 824 JPY per unit. The chief importing countries are Vietnam
21.5 Export problems 581
(794,201 units), the Philippines (481,698 units), China (22,285 units), and Indonesia (91,245 units). As about 9,213,000 units were formally recycled in 2009, we reckon that, compared to the amounts recycled domestically, about 25% are exported. In the case of used PCs, research carried out in 2008 by the Japan Electronics and information Technology Industries Association estimated that the number of discarded PCs in 2006 had been about 9.08 million units, of which 0.68 million units were recycled by manufacturer recycling facilities, 0.14 million units by municipalities, 2.60 million units by independent waste management companies, while 1.34 million units were sold domestically, 1.24 million units were exported for reuse, and 1.85 units were exported for scrap. This means that the formal collecting system (manufacturers and municipalities) covers only about 10% of used PCs. Economic principles dictate that as long as discarded PCs have market value and the domestic used PC market is saturated, and even if reuse is encouraged and a domestic take-back system is created, it will naturally follow that discarded PCs will be exported rather than enter the domestic recycling/reuse channels, whereas, at the same time and because of wide income differences between countries and areas, PCs will be widely subjected to cascade use. In Thailand, for example, where used PCs from the country’s own domestic market do not satisfy the demand among the middle- and low-income class buyers, the supply of imported PCs is subjected to reuse and they are rebuilt. The chief concern, however, centers on what happens to those PCs after the importing countries have, in their turn, discarded them. If Information and Communication Technology (ICT) for environment is to be promulgated, then, quite apart from taking care of the WEEE, the business style for the original mass production and mass sales of electrical goods has to be changed. Recently the export of used PC monitors (HS code:852851900) is increasing instead of used CRT TVs; in 2016, about 2 million units were exported to Hong Kong, China, Macau, the Philippines, and Thailand (Table 21.3). Although the EU has approved the Basel Convention amendments, which virtually ban exports of WEEE, Japan has yet to follow suit. Unfortunately, the reality of international resource recycling practices, which lack any specific controls, entails that the industrialized countries cannot process their hazardous wastes at home, and so, by making the developing countries take the responsibility for dealing with it, they are themselves responsible for damaging human health as well as the environment (BAN/SVTC, 2002).
582 CHAPTER 21 WEEE management in Japan
Table 21.3 Export of used PC monitors (HS code:852851900) from Japan in 2016 Country (units)
Value (1000 JPY)
Average unit value (JPY)
Hong Kong 901,937 China 535,012 Macau 202,700 Philippines 138,521 Thailand 66,461
1,123,780 744,856 181,337 220,757 125,840
1245 1392 895 1594 1893
Based on Source: Japan Trade Statistics.
Because the EU Review Report recommends banning illegal shipments of exported waste, it obviously needs to strengthen its export controls on scrapped consumer equipment when these violate the Basel Convention; at the same time, when a developing country such as China, which has environmental problems but also a great demand for resources and a need for imported goods, has installed building facilities for imported scrap disassembly and appropriate processing under the supervision of customs and environmental protection agencies, it becomes necessary to consider the creation of institutions under whose umbrella producers are able to engage in active cooperation and involvement in construction and operation. Although the technologies developed under the recycling systems of Japan and the EU need to be transferred to developing countries, the high-cost constitution of Japan’s recycling technologies will remain a stumbling block, and the appropriate domestic treatment of WEEE will be the duty of the developed countries (Yoshida and Yoshida, 2008).
21.6 ECONOMIC ANALYSIS FOR URBAN MINING According to the estimation carried out by the National Institute of Material Science (released on January 11, 2008), of the quantity of metals that had accumulated in Japan to be recycled (in short, the content of the manmade urban mining), gold amounts to about 6800 tons (16% of world reserves), silver comes to 60,000 tons (22%), indium (16%), tin (11%), and tantalum (10%). Although many of these metals exceed more than 10% of the world reserves, they have not yet been collected. Instead, they are stored and some of them are shipped to other countries. The research conducted by the National Institute of Material Science has not confirmed the location of all the collections of recyclable material that have been designated as
21.6 Economic analysis for urban mining 583
constituting urban mining, and although the data has been estimated on the basis of governmental trade or production statistics, it is still not clear whether it is the fate of the metals to be scattered in the air, oxidized, or buried in the waste landfill. Nor is the grade of urban mining at all clear. Consequently, it remains necessary to clarify the form in which they currently exist (Halada et al., 2009). As to the electronics products, the generated amount of WEEE is estimated to be 2,500,000 tons/year (19.4 kg per capita). Among them, the smaller items of electrical equipment amount to around 500,000 tons/year, while the quantity of metals included in such small WEEE is estimated to be around 1000e10,000 tons for base metals like copper and lead, and around 10 tons for precious metals in a scattered condition (Shiratori and Nakamura, 2007). The main material of the nonferrous metal industry consists of industrial byproducts, termed industrial waste, and this is enough to keep it in operation and the quality homogeneous. For example, the quantity of materials input in the top submerged lance (TSL) furnace at DOWA’s Kosaka refinery, opened in 2007, is sufficient to keep the furnace operational and the quality of the input stable. The main materials are waste water sludge, electronics scrap, metal plate waste solution, used mercury oxide cells, lead frames, control boards, PCs, and connector boards. Throughout Japan, the waste electronics material constitutes only 4% of the recycling material of the nonferrous metal industry (Kozan, 2009). We thus see that the nonferrous metal industries are carrying on their business by unifying the collection of metal and the treatment of waste, and that, within the total amount of WEEE that constitutes the mass of urban mining, the scrap that is to be mined, the percentage by weight of cellular phones is very small. According to the report published by the Ministry of Public Management, Home Affairs, Post and Telecommunications (2009), the metal price recoverable from one cellular phone is about 100 JPY (¼ Japanese Yen) (in case of gold, 0.03 g 2920 JPY/g ¼ 87.6 JPY). The recycling cost is therefore reduced, and the real price of one phone is some 1e10 JPY. On the basis of this estimation, we can predict that if cellular phones were to be collected from each of the 120 million people living in Japan, the amount of gold they contained would be worth about 10 billion JPY. For the making of gold medals for the Tokyo Olympic games in 2020, a campaign to collect used cellular phones has started. It is estimated that 8 million cellular phone units will be required to make the gold, silver, and copper medals for the Tokyo Olympic games. By 2016, about 3 million units have been collected.
584 CHAPTER 21 WEEE management in Japan
The reason why we focus attention on cellular and PCs as types of urban mining, is the expanding and high speed of technological innovation of high-tech products on the one hand and supply restrictions on the other. In order to obtain a better picture of the collection and recycling of rare metals, the Japanese Ministry of Environment and the Ministry of Economy and Trade and Industry set up a research committee, and since 2009 it has been carrying out a model business in Japan. (DOWA and three other entities are cooperating in the project.) The model business has already published its first results: the cellular phone has had the highest collection rate, about 14% (collection units per potential collection units), while the average collection rate of a total of nine items (game machines, DVDs, digital cameras, etc.) has reached 10.9%. Although the estimated total of the nine items (84 million units per year) will contain 353 tons of rare metals per year, this figure accounts for only 0.2% of the total quantity of imported rare metals. Since the recovery rate at the smelter is about 60%, this means that if the collection of rare metal, combined with the recovery of the base metal and precious metal, is only of the order of 30%, then the benefitecost ratio will become 1. This means that the economic conditions of the rare metal collection business are very severe, and that a high collection rate of over 30% and the development of a more sophisticated extraction technology are therefore indispensable. When we consider the collection cost per unit, we may conclude that the methods of collection, recovery, and recycling of WEEE and end-of-life vehicle (ELV) offer a possible solution, for as well as an effective system of collection of WEEE and ELV, the research and development technology for dismantling and sorting plays a role of critical importance. For example, Shin-Etsu Chemicals, one of the Japanese producers of the Nd-Fe-B permanent magnet, has developed recovery and recycling technology for extracting neodymium and dysprosium from motors in the compressors of used air conditioners. It is estimated that if 70% of the air conditioners and washing machines in use in Japan are recycled, the amounts of rare metal magnet can, by 2030, amount to 410 tons. But it is necessary to further develop the dismantling and recycling technology (Arai, 2010). The Japanese government introduced the recycling system for small home appliances to recover and recycle rare metals in 2012. Targets may be cellular phones, game machines, digital cameras, video cameras, DVD players, microwave ovens, etc. Municipalities have to collect them, and also retailers have to set up collection boxes. After collection and special treatment of private information, recyclers recover rare metals from them.
21.6 Economic analysis for urban mining 585
On the basis of these analyses, we can summarize the economic conditions of urban mining under three headings. The first concerns the system of collection. WEEE is both diffusely scattered and movable, despite its potential accumulation, and the creation of a collection system for WEEE is an important condition for enabling the items to be recycled. The four items (TV, washing machine, refrigerator, air conditioner) are regulated and collected by Japan’s Home Appliance Recycling Law, while the Law for Promoting Effective Use of Resources permits PCs to be taken back without charge. Nevertheless, the collection rate is not sufficiently high since used PCs have their own market value. The second condition is the development of technology by individual private companies. Our examples show that nonferrous metal recycling companies must have high-level technological and R&D capability in unifying the waste treatment and the resource recovery, and technology for the appropriate analysis of WEEE that contains complex materials becomes the base for the evaluation of the metals and the cost of their treatment. The TSL furnace of DOWA and Mitsui’s lithium ion battery recycling are instances of companies responding within the current regulations to the development and deployment of new technologies of R&D. We also require both the recovery of precious metals in general and special metals such as mercury and cadmium in particular (Hagellueken, 2009). The collection and treatment of liquid crystal displays, video players, and new types of batteries become new business opportunities for companies. At the same time, not only do the Japanese companies’ environmental technology, management systems, and human development projectsdwhich are designed to cope with serious mining pollutiondcompare well with those of other countries but they have also acquired a good social reputation and many customers in and out of Japan, while being favorably noted for strong international competitiveness. The third condition concerns the demand-side problem of metals. In the countries that we have studied, price fluctuations for virgin resources constitute a major influence upon the recycling of resources. The price of virgin materials affects the fluctuation of foreign exchange, and excludes such external costs as environmental disruption, the need for subsidies, all in competition with the recycled material (Yoshida, 2004). The economic condition will depend on the costs incurred for collection, decomposition, and disposal, as compared with the prices of virgin resources. Consequently, it may be possible to focus on economically valuable resources and the application of appropriate technology for the
586 CHAPTER 21 WEEE management in Japan
disposal of complicated ores. Since 2008, when metal market prices fell sharply because of the world financial crisis, this has become more necessary than ever. It is essential that the nonferrous metal industry should succeed in stabilizing the diversity of the input material and the prices of the output product (metal). It is vitally important to raise the recovery rate of precious metal so as to cope with the dangerous fluctuations in the ultimate prices of finished goods.
21.7 CONCLUSIONS Our analysis of the distinctive WEEE recycling systems operated by Japan has shown that, in the light of the systems’ purposes and contexts, we need to reconsider cost and performance as well as the role of each of the individual actors. We consider that neither system is obviously better than the other, and that they face similar challenges to the achievement of their ultimate goals. Those challenges include the raising of collection rates, the allocation of costs, the involvement of municipalities, recycling cost/benefits, the relationship between EPR and DfE, and the drain of WEEE exports to developing countries. In particular, the key to the raising of the collection rate lies in providing an incentive for proper collection and in making it convenient for the consumer to abide by the adopted scheme. If municipalities are involved, the collection cost has to be paid. Our findings have also revealed that the retailer’s role is particularly important. The payment of a recycling fee at the time of discarding curbs the collection rate, which must be the real target. The visible fee, or the advance fee payment, does not curb the purchasing power and can contribute to the construction of the infrastructure. In the case of many home appliances, EPR cannot work well, and the appropriate domestic treatment of WEEE will be the duty of the developed countries. Our findings lead us to make the following recommendations: n
n
n
If Japan hopes to increase its collection rate of WEEE to any substantial degree, it has to change its system from one where payment is made at the time of disposal to one where payment is made in advance. Because the consumers have to pay at the time of disposal, the cost and the quality of recycling within the Japanese system is too expensive and must be reduced. To oversee and amend the problems occasioned by the cross-border problems of WEEE, Japan needs a common agenda and the framework to set up a fund that will enable it to cooperate in the collection and treatment of cross-border recycling.
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n
The regulations that forbid mixing small WEEE with MSW will contribute not only to environmental protection but also to the business opportunities and green employment. Thus, to build the collection system and to raise the collection rate of the specified four items and PCs and cellular phones, we need to improve the collection system by involving the participation of producers, retailers, consumers, and waste treatment businesses, and by introducing such incentive systems as the deposit.
In the context of the quite unprecedented changes that are now afflicting the global economy, these questions take on a new and disturbing urgency. Instead of simply organizing a WEEE recycling system meant to clean up after the consequences of mass production, mass consumption, and mass disposal, we now need a far more painstaking and balanced assessment of the issues that will cover all their environmental, economic, and social aspects, especially as they relate to each other, for if we hope to see worldwide sustainable development, it is essential that governments design systems that are meant to mitigate environmental and social burdens and reduce the consumption of natural resources by a far more effective management of WEEE.
REFERENCES AEHA, 2016. Annual Report. Association for Electric Home Appliances, Japan. AEHA, 2009. Annual Report. Association for Electric Home Appliances, Japan. Aizawa, H., Yoshida, H., Sakai, S., 2008. Current results and future perspectives for Japanese recycling of home electrical appliances. Resources, Conservation and Recycling 52, 1399. Arai, Y., 2010. Recycling of rare metal from WEEE. In: Conference on Rare Metal Recycling by the Waste Management Association, Tokyo, 9 July. BAN/SVTC, 2002. Exporting Harm: The High-tech Trashing of Asia (Seattle: Basel Action Network/San Jose: Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition). Council, Waste and Recycling Committee, Subcommittee for Assessing the Household Appliance Recycling System, 2007. On the Transparency of Recycling Fees. In: 7th Joint Meeting, 6 March. Tokyo. CWIT, 2015. Countering WEEE Illegal Trade Summary Report. Hagellueken, C., 2009. Technology challenges to recovery precious and special metals from complex products. In: R’09 and twin World Congress, Davos. Halada, K., Ijima, K., Shimada, M., Katagiri, N., 2009. A possibility of urban mining in Japan. Journal of the Japan Institute of Metals 73, 151e160. Hosoda, E., 2007. International aspects of recycling of electrical and electronic equipment: material circulation in the East Asian region. Journal of Material Cycles and Waste Management 9, 140. Jofre, S., Morioka, T., 2005. Waste management of electric and electronic equipment: comparative analysis of end-of-life strategies. Journal of Material Cycles and Waste Management 7, 24.
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Joint Meeting of the Industrial Structure Council, Subcommittee on Waste and Recycling, Electrical and Electronic Equipment Working Group, Central Environment Council, Waste and Recycling Committee, Subcommittee for Assessing the Household Appliance Recycling System, 2008a. Report on the Assessment and Examination of the Implementation Status of the Household Appliance Recycling System (in Japanese). Tokyo. Joint Meeting of the Industrial Structure Council, Subcommittee on Waste and Recycling, Electrical and Electronic Equipment Working Group, Central Environment Council, Waste and Recycling Committee, Subcommittee for Assessing the Household Appliance Recycling System, 2014. Estimation of Flow of WEEE in Japan (2012). Kheitrival, D.S., Krauchi, P., Winder, R., 2009. Producer responsibility for e-waste management: key issues for consideration. Journal of Environmental Management 90 (1), 153e165. Kozan, 2009. No. 667, p. 37 (General view of Japanese mining). Ministry of Public Management, Home Affairs, Post and Telecommunications, 2009. The Report on the Ecological Response in the Field of Information and Telecommunication, Part III. Tokyo. OKOPOL/IIIEE/RPA (Okopol GmbH Institute for Environmental Strategies/The International Insitute for Industrial Environmental Economics, Lund University/Risk & PolicyAnalysts), 2007. The Producer Responsibility Principle of the WEEE Directive. Final Report. OKOPOL, Hamburg. Shiratori, T., Nakamura, T., 2007. Artificial ore deposit design(II). Journal Mining and Materials Processing Institute of Japan 123, 171e178. Svensson, R., Engkvist, L., Eklund, J., Bjorkman, M., Eklund, M., 2005. Identified risks at Swedish recycling centres during handling of waste from electric and electronic equipment. Proceedings of Environmentally Conscious Design and Inverse Manufacturing 2005, 951. Tasaki, T., 2006. An Assessment of the Actual Effectiveness of the Household Appliance Recycling Law. National Institute for Environmental Studies, Tsukuba. Terazono, A., Moriguchi, Y., Yoshida, A., Kojima, M., 2006. Current status and research on E-waste issues in Asia. Journal of Material Cycles and Waste Management 8, 1. UNU (United Nations University), 2007. Review of Directive 2002/96 on WEEE. Final Report. UNU, Bonn. Yoshida, F., 2004. Jyankan Gata Shakai. Chuo Koron Shinsha. Yoshida, F., 2005. Cyclical Economy of Japan. Hokkaido University Press, Japan. Yoshida, F., Yoshida, H., 2008. The circular economy of China: focusing on metal recycling and WEEE recycling (in Japanese). Review of Environmental Economics and Policy 1, 14. Zheng, L., Wu, K., Li, Y., Qi, Z., Han, B., Zhang, C., Gu, G., 2008. Blood lead and cadmium levels and relevant factors among children from e-waste recycling town in China. Environmental Research 108, 15.
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FURTHER READING JEITA, 2008. Research Report on Recovery, Treatment and Recycling of IT Equipments. Japan Electronics and Information Technology Industries Association, Japan. Joint Meeting of the Industrial Structure Council, Subcommittee on Waste and Recycling, Electrical and Electronic Equipment Working Group, and Central Environment. Joint Meeting of the Industrial Structure Council, Subcommittee on Waste and Recycling, Electrical and Electronic Equipment Working Group, Central Environment Council, Waste and Recycling Committee, Subcommittee for Assessing the Household Appliance Recycling System, 2008b. The Survey of the Take-back for the Used 4 Items (Home Appliances) by Retailers During April to June 2008, Tokyo.