Taiga Company

One of the fastest growing waste streams in the US and around the world is e-Waste.  In addition to the massive physical volume, these streams contain dangerous chemicals and heavy metals including barium, lead, copper and cadmium.  Facing pressure to respond, electronics giants like Samsung are developing recycling programs to handle the end-life of their products.  These programs are adding cost to the business and may ultimately be affecting the design criteria of future products. 

Many of our supply chain focused clients utilize total cost of ownership, life cycle costing, total system value and other processes in their decision making.  However, end-life rarely receives the appropriate amount of business consideration in final product development discussions. 

As a sustainability consultant, I can’t help but look at this from a business sustainability risk  perspective.  If this e-waste disposal risk would have been visible on the front-end of electronic design:

•    Would design, sourcing, and manufacturing have changed?
•    Would the company have produced the same product?
•    Would the financial case have supported the development of the product at all?

Similar to the unvalued cost of emissions in manufacturing and development, end-life disposal costs have been largely undervalued, even in life-cycle design, largely due to the fact that it costs almost nothing to put something in a garbage barrel.  However, e-Waste recycling is now quantifying at least a partial cost for disposal. 

At Taiga Company, we believe that if companies can begin to forecast a significant end-life disposal cost in preliminary design then by default more sustainable products will begin to replace traditional ones.  Our professional consulting works with businesses to define the cost and benefits of implementing sustainability concepts into all business decision making.