A Vision for the Circular Economy in Hard Disk Drives Based on Self-Management of Common Pool Resources

Metals recovery from electronic product recycling is currently focused on high-value precious metals high-volume metals that are easily recoverable.  Current and future electronics will increasingly contain small quantities of resources which are not currently recovered in today’s recycling infrastructure. Trends toward miniaturization, product dematerialization, and increasing materials heterogeneity create increasing challenges with respect to materials recovery, and the financial viability of electronics recycling generally. This situation is bad and getting worse. iNEMI (the International Electronics Manufacturing Initiative) undertook a project, the first phase of which was to examine the role its members could play in increasing metals recovery, while promoting sustainable electronics. In the second phase the project narrowed its focus to specifically address hard disk drives (HDDs) but expanded its focus to include all dimensions of the end-of-use system (EoU) that impact its financial viability. This included the reuse of HDDs, always the superior option, as well as the reclamation of critical raw materials being lost under the existing recycling paradigm. The report from this second project phase includes, a comprehensive assessment of the annual sales and trends for HDDs, a projection of the quantity of used HDDs available for enhanced value recovery through a stocks and flows analysis using system dynamics, a detailed characterisation of the decision trees employed by HDD EoU processors which determine whether a drive is reused (either directly, white labelled or for parts) or recycled (largely based on shredding), and the parameters that guide these decisions, an overview of data security and data destruction methods employed, an investigation of new pathways to value recovery including automated disassembly, removal and repurposing of magnets, and an industry-wide survey examining the barriers and potential solutions to implementing these pathways. The project further examined whether conditions exist, as a way to implement these improvements, to develop a voluntary, community-based solution involving adaptive governance systems to self-manage common pool resources. This concept was inspired by the work of Dr. Eleanor Ostrom (2009 Nobel Laureate in Economics). It was concluded that the key necessary conditions do exist. Specifically: the system dynamics are sufficiently predictable, the number of users are known, the leadership exists – The electronics industry is well organized by industry associations and certain large companies are recognized as leaders, the users of the resources share experience in group processes – The industry has worked well together on many initiatives, e.g. RoHS transition, iNEMI, EICC, IEC & EPEAT standards, and there exists a recognition of the importance of critical resources and supply risks. In summary the iNEMI study has defined a basis for action to address the disastrous economic situation for EoU electronics by maximizing value recovery opportunities. There are two directions that should be pursued from here: implement the opportunities for HDD value recovery, and conduct comparable analyses for other EoU components and products