Elliot Maxwell of PURE

What are the main goals of Project PURE, and why was the project funded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)?

Project PURE is an attempt to learn how RFID can be used to address an important social problem – the proliferation of electronic waste (e-waste). With more and more electronic devices being manufactured and sold, every country is faced with the question of how to reduce the environmental impact of the manufacture, distribution, sale, and, ultimately, the disposal of consumer electronics including computers, mobile phones and other devices. We believe that the tagging of items driven by supply chain needs or attached at the time of disposal can be used to improve the efficiency and lower the costs of re-users and re-furbishers, recyclers, materials aggregators and waste disposers. We realized however that we needed to test these beliefs.

Because part of the mission of the U.S. EPA is to reduce waste and ensure the proper handling of hazardous materials, a multiple stakeholder group including a computer manufacturer, a retailer, a re-user and re-furbisher, recyclers, and an RFID technology provider, with the support of EPCglobal, approached the EPA to seek funding for this research. We were awarded an EPA grant to study how RFID might be used in innovative ways to protect the environment. Our proposal was focused on increasing the efficiency and lowering the cost of reuse, refurbishing, recycling and disposal of electronics by utilizing RFID tags attached for supply chain purposes or when the electronic good began one of the end-of-life processes. Since then the participants have worked hard to increase our practical understanding of these questions.

How can RFID be used to improve the end-of-life disposal of consumer electronics?

The potential benefits of RFID in the supply chain are well known. But very little attention has been paid to the possible benefits of using RFID in the end-of-life processes for electronic goods.

At the end of a product’s life, RFID can increase efficiency for companies that specialize in reusing, refurbishing, and recycling electronics. It can be used to improve tracking of parts and inventory management. It can also help automate the reporting and auditing required for recycling and disposal. RFID can be used to identify hazardous or high risk goods or those requiring special handling as well as the presence of valuable materials that can be recovered. New incentive programs based on RFID tags could be used to increase the reuse and recycling of electronic goods.

What about the hazardous materials inside electronics?

RFID can be used to identify and track hazardous and high-risk materials contained in consumer electronics and those requiring special handling, such as increased security, and help ensure their proper handling and disposal. Use of RFID to identify component materials can also improve the safety and efficiency of the disposal of the materials.

The de-activation of RFID tags at the point of purchase would negate the technology's usefulness in recycling. What is your recommendation?

Project PURE has identified obstacles to the use of RFID to improve the efficiency of end-of-life processes. These include the lack of pervasive tagging of individual electronic goods and the time lag between when tags are applied and when the tagged goods are ready for reuse or recycling. But a more pressing and current obstacle is the potential requirement that all tags on individual items such as computers be deactivated at the point of sale unless the customer specifically opts-in to leave the tag active. Such a requirement would likely dramatically reduce the number of items with active tags that eventually reach re-users and recyclers. This would discourage end-of-life companies from investing in RFID based systems and would likely reduce investment in, and the development of, other socially desirable post-sale uses of RFID. A better course would be to inform consumers and provide them with choices so they can remove or disable a tag.

Organisation:

Elliot Maxwell is a Senior Fellow, Communications Program, of Johns Hopkins University and Former Special Advisor for the Digital Economy to the U.S. Secretary of Commerce. He is the initiator of Project PURE, which received a grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and which was also funded by EPCglobal. He suggested that EPCglobal test how RFID can be used to increase and improve recycling of consumer electronics.