Digital items are highly regarded, and lately, retailers have been providing important reductions on smartphones, e-readers, and different electronics labeled as “pre-owned.” Analysis I’ve co-led finds that these pre-owned choices have gotten more and more viable, thanks in part to laws and policies that encourage recycling and reuse of units that may beforehand have been thrown away.
Amazon, Walmart, and Greatest Purchase have devoted pages on their web sites for pre-owned units. Producers like Apple and Dell, in addition to cellular service suppliers like AT&T and Verizon, supply their very own choices for patrons to purchase used objects. Their gross sales depend on the provision of a large volume of used products, that are equipped by the emergence of an entire line of businesses that course of used, discarded, or returned electronics.
These developments are among the outcomes of widespread innovations across the electronics industry that provide chain researcher Suresh Muthulingam and I have linked to California’s Electronic Waste Recycling Act, handed in 2003.
Recycling innovation
Initially meant to cut back the quantity of digital waste flowing into the state’s landfills, California’s regulation did way more, unleashing a wave of innovation, our evaluation discovered.
We analyzed the patent-filing exercise of a whole bunch of electronics corporations over a 17-year time span from 1996 to 2012. We discovered that the passage of California’s regulation not solely prompted electronics producers to interact in sustainability-focused innovation, nevertheless it additionally sparked a surge typically innovation round merchandise, processes, and strategies.
Confronted with new laws, electronics producers and suppliers didn’t simply make small changes, resembling tweaking their packaging to make sure compliance. They basically rethought their design and manufacturing processes to create merchandise that use recycled supplies and which are simply recyclable themselves.
For instance, Samsung’s Galaxy S25 smartphone is a brand new product that, when launched in Could 2025, was product of eight totally different recycled supplies, together with aluminum, neodymium, metal, plastics, and fiber.
Mixed with superior recycling applied sciences and processes, these supplies may be recovered and reused a number of instances in new units and merchandise. For instance, Apple invented the Daisy Robot, which disassembles outdated iPhones in a matter of seconds and recovers quite a lot of valuable metals, together with copper and gold. These supplies, which might in any other case need to be mined from rock, are reused in Apple’s manufacturing course of for brand spanking new iPhones and iPads.
How do customers profit?
Previously 20 years, 25 U.S. states and Washington D.C. have handed legal guidelines requiring electronics recycling and refurbishing, the method of restoring a pre-owned digital system in order that it may perform like new.
The institution of industry guidelines and standards additionally signifies that all pre-owned units are completely examined for performance and beauty look earlier than resale.
Firms’ deeper engagement with innovation seems to have created organizational momentum that carried over into different areas of product improvement. For instance, in our examine, we discovered that the passage of California’s regulation immediately resulted in a flurry of patents related to semiconductor materials, data storage, and battery technology, amongst others. These scientific advances have made units extra sturdy, repairable, and recyclable.
For the typical client, the recycling legal guidelines and the ensuing trade responses imply used electronics can be found with comparable reliability, warranties, and return insurance policies as new units—and at prices as much as 50% lower.
Suvrat Dhanorkar is an affiliate professor of operations administration at Georgia Institute of Technology.
This text is republished from The Conversation beneath a Inventive Commons license. Learn the original article.
