• by Aaron Baar , April 13, 2011

Consumer electronics makers, marketers and retailers are teaming up to promote the recycling of their products.

In conjunction with the Consumer Electronics Association, companies such as Panasonic, Sony, Toshiba, Best Buy and others (as well as recyclers and governmental and non-governmental agencies) have created the eCycling Leadership Initiative, which will seek to recycle one billion pounds of electronics annually by 2016. That would be a threefold increase in the amount of electronics recycling that occurred in 2010.

"There's a patchwork of state regulations currently about e-cycling," CEA representative Tim Doyle tells Marketing Daily. "It's very hard for consumers and costly for manufacturers to follow that approach. This is our way of stepping forward [to create] a national approach."

Core to the initiative's mission will be improving consumer awareness of the 5,000 collection sites currently sponsored by the industry, as well as increasing the number of collection opportunities available and providing transparent metrics on eCycling efforts. Among those consumer education efforts will be new online tools and mobile apps, as well as issuing an annual national progress report, using 2010 as a baseline.

"That's something we think consumers could learn more about, [as well as] educating consumers about third-party, recycling certification systems," Doyle says. "There's a lot of work to be done. This is just the beginning."

Because of these early stages, it was unclear how much -- if any -- marketing resources the individual companies might put behind this effort, although Doyle pointed out that many of them have already begun their own e-cycling awareness informational campaigns.