Small electronic devices | Recovery in shallows

The recovery of small electronic devices further missed its targets in 2023, and their re -use continued its abyssal fall in Quebec, stirring criticism from companies responsible for managing the end of life of their products.

Read “small electronic devices: improvements in 2024”

Electronic computers and tablets, phones, portable electronic products: none of these three categories of precious metals has reached the recovery rates imposed by the Quebec government in order to divert them from landfills.

The phone category stood out for a particularly low performance of 5 %, while the recovery target to be reached was 25 %.

On the other hand, the recovery of larger devices has surpassed the targets, show data from the Quebec Recovery and Recycling Society (Recyc-Québec), published in early summer.

The Association for the Recycling of Electronic Products in Quebec (ARPE), the organization formed by companies that sell these products, is responsible for their recovery under the principle of expanding liability (REP). The arpe was required to present a recovery plan for the situation in Recyc-Québec.

The organization refused to send a copy to The pressinitially pretending not to have given it yet to Recyc-Québec. But the Crown corporation claims to have received it a year ago in July 2024; And carry out his analysis since. The arpe affirms that the protruding facts of the plan will be made public on September 30, 2025, the deadline provided for by law to do so.

Poor reuse

Electronic devices are also less and less reused: the re -use rate of what the arpen is baptized by “Serpuarians” (contraction of “is useless”) increased from 10 % in 2021 to 7 % in 2022, then 5.5 % in 2023.

“The term” Serpuarians “refers the idea that we cannot re-use them, which is also a problem,” deplores Julie-Christine Denoncourt, reduction analyst at the source of the Ecologist Equiterre organization.

The REP law, however, requires that the companies concerned first promote re-use, then recycling, then valuation and, as a last resort, elimination, she recalls.

“Reuse remains the weak link in the chain,” said Amélie Côté, an independent expert in the management of residual materials. It deplores the fact that companies that make re -use are not eligible for compensation for the transport of electronic devices, unlike those that make recycling. “This is a decision that is taken arbitrarily by arpe,” said the expert.

There are certainly end -of -life devices whose components cannot be re -used, recognizes M^me On the side, but it criticizes the arpe for not climbing data on this subject, despite the obligation to do so.

“If we want to increase the rate of re-use, you have to know its potential,” she said, stressing the economic interest of the thing, household expenditure in electronic aircraft that has doubled for a decade.

Failed objective

The REP system for producers of electronic devices, launched in 2012, is “poorly done”, estimates Karel Ménard, director general of the Quebec Common Front for ecological waste management, advancing that producers should be imposed on recycling and re -use rates rather than a recovery rate that “does not mean”.

A REP must promote the marketing of more sustainable and more recyclable products, but that on electronic devices completely misses this objective, he adds.

Arpe maintains that 95 % of the 19,000 tonnes of electronic devices recovered in 2023 have been recycled, but included in this calculation the materials sent to burial and energy recovery.

“We play with the words”, offends Karel Ménard, who deplores the opacity of the arpe and the lack of traceability of the recovered materials.

The arpe ensures that the recovered devices are dismantled from Quebec’s “primary recyclers”, which then resell the components in the United States, Malaysia, China and Japan, as well as in Canada, notably at the Horne foundry in Rouyn-Nonda, but cannot indicate the exact quantities and destinations.

The organization should also ensure that recycling of devices is made in compliance with environmental standards, underlines Amélie Côté, recalling the controversy over the rejections of contaminants of the Horne Foundry.

This lack of transparency is all the more deplorable since citizens pay “ecofrais” for the purchase of electronic devices in order to finance their management at the end of life, recall Karel Ménard and Amélie Côté.

“If I pay them, it is to make sure that electronic devices are well managed,” she says. Right now, this is not the case. »»