Making eRecycling a success

It’s good to collect

You play a vital role at the beginning of the recycling process. Faulty electrical equipment – no matter how small – must not be thrown out with household waste but instead deposited at the designated return points.

There are two ways to do this in Switzerland. You can hand over your disused electrical and electronic equipment at specialist or retail shops – in other words, at all shops that sell products of the same type. Or you can take your electronic waste to one of over 440 collection points affiliated with the SENS recycling system.

Disposal without additional costs

Whether you return your equipment to a shop or a collection point, you will not be charged extra for its disposal. That’s because you’ve already paid for it through the advance recycling contribution included in the purchase price of almost all electrical equipment sold in Switzerland. 

Potentially record-breaking collection levels

Electronic waste is collected at official return points, where it is also sorted and packaged. It is then transported to specialist disassembly and recycling companies. 
 
The quantities involved are impressive. Since SENS eRecycling was founded in 1990, no less than 1.3 million tonnes of electrical equipment has been collected and delivered to recycling companies in Switzerland. Hardly any other country collects more electronic waste per capita. 

Separating the valuable from the harmful

Electronic waste contains a wide range of components. Many of these are valuable and can be reused. Others, however, are harmful. This problem is the first task tackled by recycling companies.

They start by disassembling components and materials containing hazardous substances, often using manual processes. These tasks are generally carried out at sites called disassembly facilities.

Keeping valuable resources in circulation

Ultimately, the aim is to recover valuable raw materials that can be reused and close the material cycle in the best possible way.

The proportion of recyclable materials in electronic waste is high, at around 75% on average. This mainly involves metals such as iron, steel, copper and aluminium, various plastics and glass, but also precious metals such as silver and gold.

Innovative processes, effective protection

State-of-the-art separation technology is used to recover the various recyclable materials as efficiently as possible, along with innovative, high-capacity sorting and processing techniques.

This ensures that metals and plastics are returned to the material cycle in the purest possible form, ready to be reused as secondary raw materials in the manufacture of new goods. This closes the cycle, conserves resources and the provides effective environmental protection.