Green E-Waste Disposal: Moving Towards a Green Economy

The sustainability culture at CHEP, a global leader in pallet and container pooling services, was upheld as an aspirational standard for the industry during this week’s episode of Net Zero Carbon. But this culture is baked into CHEP’s history.  “CHEP was founded when the allies left all these pallets for moving equipment during World War II in Australia,” said Tyler Cole, FreightWaves’ director of carbon intelligence. “It started as a way to get rid of waste with all the excess pallets laying around, and through a big global growth expansion and standardization of pallet size and forklift offloading, they’ve been able to scale and get rid of a lot of that waste.”
As the current climate crisis spurs supply chain constituents to join the movement, CHEP has continued its efforts by partnering with Convoy to reduce empty miles. Like many shippers, CHEP was paying for those empty backhauls, but during an initial trial of Convoy’s technology, it was able to reduce empty miles by 50%. Behind that optimization lies cost savings, a more efficient supply chain and emissions reductions. 

For the first time, RMI has examined the vast potential for resource recycling in China and shown how it can serve as an important component of reaching the nation’s zero-carbon goal. Growing the Circular Economy: Opportunities for Resource Recycling under China’s Carbon-Neutrality Target [PDF] quantifies the market opportunity across nine key segments, from scrap steel and plastics to biomass and EV batteries, finding a ¥2.8 trillion potential market in 2050. The report provides a qualitative analysis of each of these segments, looking at the current state of the market and addressing issues such as resource availability, existing policy supports, and the potential for greenhouse gas mitigation. It also explores how the development of resource recycling industries can help to shift business ecosystems towards a circular economy with greater efficiency, lower emissions, and reduced waste.