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The result is a product cycle that matches the pace of innovation:

Between consumers and businesses, an estimated 50 million tons of electronic waste is disposed of each year. Some of that is recycled properly. The rest is not.

Nearly 400 million units of consumer electronics are sold per year. Relatively light regulations and recycling standards result in th

Multiple Solutions for Hoteliers Despite the doom and gloom, there are a multitude of solutions to the hospitality industry’s e-waste problem.

The remaining 86.4 percent made its way into landfills,

Old TVs and computer monitors contain lead, cadmium and brominated flame retardants; all of which are hazardous to personal and environmental well-being.

90 percent of the e-waste that is recycled is sent overseas.

Developing countries have become ground zero for e-waste collection

. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, only 13.6 percent of all e-waste was recycled properly in 2007

That hotels upgrade their televisions is not an issue as long as their existing units are recycled properly

It starts with awareness:

Then hoteliers can move to change a different statistic:

, hoteliers should seek out domestic recyclers and take care of their e-waste recycling with proven, safe commodities.

Environmentally responsible, eco-savvy hotels are in vogue right now, appealing to customers with promises of sustainable travel and accommodation

Sustainable building materials, recycling services and even linen reuse programs are tangible ways for guests to see that their hosts are eco-conscious.

Green Hospitality with a Backbone

Green hospitality makes money, but it mustn’t be without a backbone.

Actual green hospitality outweighs the appearance of green hospitality

organizations hop on the sustainability bandwagon, it is more important than ever that recycling becomes permanent,

This means actively looking for and implementing recycling solutions, not simply shipping our problems overseas.

e recycle and reuse more than ever. B

E-waste recycling, for most people and companies, is not a day-to-day occurrence, which means we should be ready to handle it when the time comes

the International Labour Organization (ILO)

he United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and other members of the E-waste Coalition

increase the global e-waste recycling rate to 30%.

They now number more than humans and are projected to grow to 25-50 billion by 2020, reflecting plummeting costs and rising demand.

The situation is not helped by the fact that only 20% of global e-waste is formally recycled. The remaining 80% is often incinerated or dumped in landfill.

By all coming together on the global stage we can create a sustainable industry that generates less waste, and in which our devices are re-used as well recycled in novel ways. This also creates new forms of employment, economic activity, education and trade.

Already 67 countries have enacted legislation to deal with the e-waste they generate. Apple, Google, Samsung and many other brands have set ambitious targets for recycling and for the use of recycled and renewable materials.

Action is needed now.

E-waste is not pollution, nor is it waste - it’s a vital resource we are only just starting to value in full.

The first step towards reducing e-waste is increasing consumer education

Another crucial step is improving the design of electronic devices to be more sustainable.

more aesthetically pleasing than before. Often, these shortcuts make devices harder to recycle at the end of their lives.

Local infrastructure needs to be improved to help consumers easily recycle electronic goods instead of hoarding or unsafely discarding them

. Designers must figure out how to create products that are both beautiful and can endure far longer

E-waste is a growing problem that requires immediate attention from stakeholders worldwide.

Celebrating its 15th anniversary, Portland, Ore.-based Leanpath continues to hit milestones in its food waste prevention platform, which can be described as an ecosystem of hardware, software and support that allows foodservice kitchens to track and prevent food waste.

predicts global e-waste will reach 74 Mt by 2030,

In 2019, only 17.4 per cent of e-waste was officially documented as formally collected and recycled

a target to increase the global e-waste recycling rate to 30 per cent by 2023

The number of countries that have adopted a national e-waste policy, legislation or regulation has increased from 61 to 78 between 2014 and 2019.

TU Member States also set a target to raise the percentage of countries with an e-waste legislation to 50 per cent – or 97 countries - by 2023.

Technology has enabled waste management to ensure environmental and human health protection while at the same time handling complex materials, increasing recycling, producing energy and virtually eliminating landfills in some countries.

Robotics are already widely present in sorting material facilities

The internet allows continuous real-time tracking of waste across countries

Hydraulic collection systems are increasingly being introduced in new buildings to avoid bins on the road.

Plant management, emission monitoring, chemical/biological parameters within plants

These new technologies are creating vast amounts of data. The data allows us to understand the movement not just of waste but of people – how they behave and what products and materials they are buying and will turn into waste.

predict the future and plan waste collection, the location of bins on the streets, the amount of plant we need, with some anticipation.

It also allows producers of waste to intervene to reduce their waste outputs

Add to this the use of artificial intelligence and blockchain computing – technologies that allow the multiplication of the access and transmission of intelligence and its automation. How does this work in practice?

First, data collection will be faster and simpler; then automated trend and performance analysis allows the user to see anomalies immediately; finally, this informs employee behaviour and decisions and allows immediate corrective actions.

respiratory problems, chronic nausea, and debilitating headaches

—brought on by the hazardous working environment and toxic air pollution.

smashing up old computers and televisions in search of valuable parts and burning insulated cables to recover copper.

The Agbogbloshie dump is a result of the world’s increasing demand for electronic equipment as consumers continually upgrade their devices and throw out the older ones.

The e-waste problem could expand into a global health crisis,

significant proportion of this electronic waste is sent, often illegally, from the West to developing countries across Africa and Asia.

Around 50 million tons of electronic waste, or e-waste, is being thrown away each year, according to a report published this year by the United Nations.

figure is projected to double by 2050.

only 20 percent of e-waste is thought to be recycled appropriately.

The rest “ends up in landfill, or is disposed of by informal workers in poor conditions,” the UN found.

A

“E-waste is a growing global challenge that poses a serious threat to the environment and human health worldwide,”

In Ghana, the waste arrives via the Port of Tema, 20 miles to the east of the Agbogbloshie dump.

They are often labeled as secondhand consumer products, health experts said, so they are not strictly considered waste.

“There are skin diseases and ailments [at Agbogbloshie], but the worst problem here is respiratory illnesses, because the amount of pollution here is so high,”

the quality of air is terrible

“The workers can’t do anything about it because they have to earn a living, so it’s a trade-off. They earn money but their health suffers.”

These health risks are entering the food chain. The Agbogbloshie area is home to one of the largest food markets in Accra, and haggard livestock roam freely and graze on the dumpsite.

Agbogbloshie contained some of the most hazardous chemicals on earth.

One egg hatched by a free-range chicken in Agbogbloshie exceeded European Food Safety Authority limits on chlorinated dioxins, which can cause cancer and damage the immune system, 220 times over.

about 80,000 men, women, and children subsist from the Agbogbloshie dump, living either on-site or in the adjacent slum.

Ghana imports about 150,000 tons of secondhand electronics a year,

an international treaty that since 1989 has forbidden developed nations from carrying out unauthorized dumping of e-waste in less developed countries.

It is very important the issue of waste export to developing countries such as Africa and other countries in transition should be looked at critically.”

The German development agency GIZ is in the midst of delivering a €5 million ($5.5 million) project to build a sustainable, efficient recycling system at Agbogbloshie, as well as a health clinic and football pitch for workers.

But as the world’s appetite for electronics keeps growing, preventing the illegal dumping of electronic waste and the devastating impact it has on places like Agbogbloshie will prove an even greater challenge.

California’s Electronic Waste and Recycling Act of 2003 established four main purposes to manage the growing amount of E-Waste.

facilitate the collection and recycling of covered devices,”

intends to eliminate E-waste stockpiles

make manufacturers report their efforts to increase the use of recycled materials.

end the illegal disposal of covered electronic devices

we need to focus more on reusing and donating electronics to a greater cause

Only twenty-five states have passed legislation in the last fourteen years.

E-waste is changing rapidly and legislation hasn’t kept up with the demand.

Encouraging reuse can simultaneously reduce E-waste in landfills and bridge the digital divide in low-income communities

Recycling centers don’t always recycle your old devices. It has been well documented (here and here) that most of them ship old electronics to other countries that don’t have strict environmental laws.

The sheer number of electronic devices entering the waste stream is also leveling off or slightly declining, Babbitt and Althaf say. This is due to something that Babbitt terms “convergence”: gaming consoles, for example, can act as DVD players; smartphones are also cameras and video recorders. In the past, says Babbitt, people needed separate devices for each of those applications.

“Hilton is committed to minimizing waste by providing our properties with a sustainable solution for the proper disposal of their existing TV sets rather than sending them to a landfill where they can leak harmful substances in the environment,” says Judy Pines, director of sustainability and responsible sourcing at Hilton.

Working together, Hilton Hotels, LG and GSS recycled nearly 400 older flat-panel hotel TVs from the Hilton Newark Airport.

Each recycled TV set was replaced with a new 43-inch Energy Star certified LG flat screen TV. The program was successfully executed in four days and had a minimal impact on guests.  

The old TVs were transported to an e-Stewards-certified recycling facility in New York, where they were manually taken apart and sorted into various components. “Parts that cannot be dismantled efficiently are shredded into smaller e-waste pieces and eventually broken down even further,”

TVs contain valuable and reusable materials such as plastics, copper, gold and glass and approximately 99 percent of the TV components can be repurposed into new electronics

One option is a turnkey solution that includes the installation of new TVs, the removal of old TVs (50 unit minimum), TV programming and transportation to a recycling facility. The second option is for recycling services only and includes the removal of the old TVs and transportation of the old TVs to an e-recycler.

In addition to partnering with Hilton Hotels, LG has focused on making responsible recycling a priority.

The RTI web-based TOM portal provides operators with at-a-glance, real-time visibility via reports showing store-level activities like oil usage statistics, shortening quantities, oil quality, and filtration data.

The environmental focus is here to stay and must be embraced.

Clearly, hotels and resorts are in the business of making money, but they must do so in a conscientious manner

The focus on sustainability or "going green" is quickly becoming a major trend. But let’s face it, being environmentally conscious is the right thing to do, and it should be a business imperative for everyone. After all, a significant portion of the hospitality and tourism industries rely on the natural beauty and desirability of destinations: beach resorts, mountain ski lodges and canyon-land ranches

Deploying effective technology practices such as Energy Star compliance to power down computers automatically after periods of inactivity and server virtualization: This means having applications which share a common server rather than each application hosted on a separate server.

There are numerous opportunities for IT professionals to take leadership roles in helping their organizations to adopt sustainable practices.

Using IT responsibly and effectively to reduce energy, water and paper consumption: Energy management systems are effective at controlling guest comfort while saving energy consumption and costs.

Tackling e-waste and deploying recycling technologies to reduce environmental waste and impacts: Many electronic firms offer responsible recycling programs for used hardware. Technology can also be utilized to assist in the recycling process

 Digital marketing practices: Using digital media instead of print media is a great way to save money while reducing the impact on the environment. By tapping into social media, you can let guests be involved in green practices and spread the word virally about all the good the organization is doing

There is a growing environmentally conscious market, a profitable segment to tap

.    Educate employees and guests to improve awareness of environmental issues and green practices in your organization and the industry.

   Conduct an energy audit to see where and how energy is being consumed and to establish a baseline. Continue these audits on a regular basis.

Seek suggestions from employees and guests, and offer rewards for ideas that get implemented.

Celebrate and market key successes

these hydrocarbons can contribute to the greenhouse gas effect, which many scientists think is a leading contributor to global warming.

he hospitality industry is also one known for producing exorbitant amounts of waste.

In order to make more green, here are some of the tactics within the headlines of late that are being used to keep up with the sustainable practices to woo this generation, and those others to come.

Thanks to technology, hotels have been making strides to becoming more environmentally friendly without breaking the bank.

According to Forbes, millennials consider social responsibility and environmental friendliness when making their purchases, so brands have to rise to these significant expectations millennials have when it comes to spending their money.

Through the use of an intelligent camera, smart scales and AI-based smart meter technology, Winnow Vision analyses ingredients during food preparation, as well as plates returned to the kitchen, to assess which food items are most wasted and in what quantities.

Cruises Also Taking a Stand with Tech

the cruise line is implementing technology to help reduce its ecological impact including clean LNG as fuel on its new ships, installing an Advanced Emission Purification system on most of its fleet, making progress with its program to eliminate single-use plastics, and is increasing its number of ships that are zero landfill capable

Hotels Continue to Innovate

According to the American Hotel & Lodging Association (AHLA) trend survey released earlier this year, supporting sustainable initiatives remains important to the lodging industry as a whole.

This tells us that hotels need to continue to innovate and the future of technology in hospitality has to be green, or those brands that do not adopt to these emerging standards face being left behind.

The world produces about 53 million tons of e-waste annually and that volume is expected to double by 2050, according to the United Nations Institute for Training and Research and the International Telecommunication Union.

But he says Mount Recyclemore "forces viewers to consider e-waste as something that's local, immediate and very much theirs. Addressing questions of electronic refuse will in part require consumers in developed countries to tell manufacturers to make more durable and repairable devices. Artworks like this one are a starting point for the discussion.

E-waste contains these hard-to-find elements in abundance.

as of 2019, only around 17% of the world’s e-waste was being properly managed for recycling in the countries that generate it

In an initial demonstration, this method recovered more than 80% of the precious metals, such as palladium and silver, that were present in an e-waste sample4, while also enabling easy isolation of toxic compounds such as mercury and lead.

Not everything can be readily recycled, but there are opportunities to create ‘green electronics’ that can be produced and disposed of in a more environmentally friendly way.

Conventional circuit boards are built on fibreglass, which is non-biodegradable and typically laced with potentially toxic fire-retardant compounds. Martins’ group is working on paper-based boards that could offer an environmentally friendlier alternative.

recyclable or compostable electronics could become invaluable in devices intended for short-term use, or in narrow-purpose devices such as wearables or environmental sensors that don’t have to meet the same rigorous performance standards as the processors found in smartphones.

But more-aggressive measures will probably be necessary, including tighter regulations.

Manufacturers should also pursue practices that promote circularity.

Planned obsolescence by manufacturers is part of the problem, but resolving this issue will also be a matter of public education and policies that boost civic-mindedness and environmental consciousness

A data centre is a facility used to house computer systems and their components, and it can be far and away the biggest contributor to an organisation’s carbon footprint. A data centre’s life expectancy is relatively long so it is imperative it is built to the highest standards in terms of efficiency as any excess energy use will lead to significant cost implications over the years.

1. Build the most energy-efficient data centre possible. This will save energy and costs over its lifespan. 2. Only get the data storage capacity that is currently required and forecast for the lifespan. Many data centres have excess capacity that burns energy (and therefore costs) unnecessarily. Don’t have servers or equipment that will not be used. 3. Cooling data centres. Traditionally cooling has been done by air circulation, which is very inefficient. Larger data centres already use other technologies to cool more efficiently, such as water cooling. 4. Virtualisation technology. Improve your system’s resource utilisation through virtualisation technology. Virtualisation is the creation of a virtual (rather than actual) version of something, such as an operating system, server, network, etc. and allows a single user to access several physical devices on one terminal. A computing device dedicated to an individual member of staff or allocated for one software application is highly inefficient and expensive. Virtualisation consolidates resources, requiring less power and cooling. 5. Consider cloud computing. This is a location-independent IT service, typically available over the internet, where shared servers provide resources, software and data to computers and other devices on demand, increasing IT capacity and capabilities without an organisation having to invest in new infrastructure. Keeping data virtually, or “in the clouds”, means less information stored on IT systems and therefore less energy being used to run the systems. Systems such as BT’s Virtual Data Centre, a hosted data centre that enables businesses to create, deploy, monitor and manage their own service through a self-service portal, claim to offer savings of up to 40% of the total cost of running one’s own data centre as well as reducing the space required, the level of emissions produced and the power consumed.

6. Measure and monitor power usage. Once you know what’s using the power, focus on why and whether it’s possible to reduce consumption.

1. Upgrade. Before buying new, investigate options to upgrade with the latest energy-efficient components to extend appliances’ working life and efficiency. 2. Green labels. Look out for the certification labels denoting more energy-efficient equipment, from Blue Angel in Germany to TCO in Sweden and Energy Star in the US (see below). 3. Screens. Opt for flat screen monitors, which reduce energy use by over two-thirds. 4. Get the right equipment. Consider your information technology needs against the tasks required. For example, laptops may be a better option in some circumstances because they have been developed to be energy-efficient and generally match the computer to the task required. Remember: not all staff have the same needs. 5. Consider running costs. Look at the life cycle costs, not just the purchase cost. Take note of running and standby costs of equipment. These can vary enormously.

Top 10 Tips to reduce running costs of office equipment (source: Carbon Trust) 1. Computers. Activate energy-saving features. In fact, most office equipment will have these features, so make sure they’re activated. 2. Standby features. Introduce a policy to activate standby features, don’t assume employees will do it. 3. Turn it off. Buy seven-day timers. These can save up to 70% on energy costs. 4. Monitor and manage the equipment that is peripheral to computers, such as speakers, printers, etc. and consider installing intelligent switch-off solutions. Printers can consume 30%-40% of their peak power demand when idling between printing and standby modes, so minimising this can produce cost savings, reduce heat output and increase its operating life. 5. Educate your staff. Consider a screen saver with an energy-saving message. 6. Rationalise your equipment via networking to reduce the number of printers (for example) in any office area. 7. Printers Use only black and white for internal documents and colour only when absolutely necessary. Consider the benefits of inkjet printers v laser printers. Inkjet energy use is much lower than that of a laser printer. Encourage staff to use print preview functions. Set default printing mode to double-sided. Use lower-specification printers, such as inkjets, for internal documents and encourage staff to use these for day-to-day use.

8. Photocopiers High volume copiers use more energy so should be used sparingly. Use low melting point inks (available from stationery suppliers). Encourage staff to copy in batches to increase standby time. Stick to black and white copiers and only use colour when absolutely necessary. Set default copying to double-sided. 9. Invest to save and purchase only what you need. 10. Don’t forget to motivate staff. Keep repeating the message of the importance of energy saving in ways that they can understand (for example, a computer monitor switched off overnight saves enough energy to microwave six dinners).

WEEE (Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment), or e-Waste, is the term used for old or disposed electronic equipment. It covers both the toxic and valuable materials found in appliances. The most important lesson is to reuse, not recycle. With so much e-Waste, and electrical devices such as computers and flat screens often being replaced well before the end of their shelf life and ending up in landfill, it’s imperative that the most is made of these materials by reusing them productively.

Options to investigate when trying to reduce e-waste are: 1. Can you upgrade your equipment with new energy efficient components? 2. Can it be used by someone else in the company? 3. Can it be given to a charity? (Note: charities must be registered to take WEEE.) 4. Will the manufacturer take back the old equipment and reuse parts in new products?

Developments on the horizon include: 1. Smaller, more efficient processors. The continuing development of microprocessors means a mobile phone can have around the same computational power as the average desktop computer back in 2000. 2. Memristors. Electronics giant HP is in the process of developing “memristors” (see photo above), which have greater memory storage capacity while requiring less energy and space. They are due to be on the shelf in about three years. 3. Specialist data centre design. Siemens recently launched its transformational Data Centre Solution, a groundbreaking strategy in data centre energy-efficient design and operation. It claims the system, which uses virtualization and efficient power and cooling, offers many benefits for businesses, including up to 50% energy savings through ground water cooling and IT costs reduced by 30%. 4. Outsourcing. Hotels of all sizes are starting to view IT outsourcing as a viable option to gain flexibility and reduce short-term costs and increase transparency of cost structures and processes. 5. Optimisation of resources. This will become a necessity either through virtualisation, networking or cloud computing. 6. Water cooling. IBM is currently working on a supercomputer that is cooled by water (a given volume of water can hold 4,000 times more waste than air), which claims to be 50% more energy efficient than the world’s leading systems. The Aquasar stacks many computer processors on top of each other with cooling water flowing between each one. IBM’s Dr Bruno Michel told the BBC in November 2010: “We plan that 10 to 15 years from now, we can collapse such a system into one sugar cube — we’re going to have a supercomputer in a sugar cube.”

The hotel TVs and computer monitors collected under this program will be processed in an environmentally responsible manner at one of four regionally designated Waste Management recycling facilities that are ISO 14001 and 9001 certified to protect the local environment in those communities along with the people handling this Waste.

"As the lodging industry seeks to increase its environmentally conscious initiatives, the LG program gives hotel operators the opportunity to conveniently recycle electronic waste responsibly and economically," said Patrick DeRueda, president of WM Recycle America.

"By recycling used, unwanted, obsolete or damaged electronic equipment, useful materials such as glass, metals and plastics may be recovered for reuse in other products," he said.