As a member of the Alliance platform, BFS is keen to play a role in shaping a sustainable and large-scale waste management industry. BFS sees the Alliance as an opportunity to network with experts from science and academia and public bodies, as well as with publicly and privately-owned companies from all over the world that are already operating in this area or are interested in waste management solutions. Working through the Working Groups, BFS wants to cooperate with international development organisations to reform waste management policy and provide technical advice, particularly in emerging economies and countries dealing with crises.
BFS is convinced that the Alliance’s Working Group 3 (Collecting and re-using electrical and electronic appliances) can develop sustainable, environmentally-friendly solutions for collecting and handling scrap electrical appliances at national level. With the help of the experts in the Working Group, Germany’s Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development and international IT companies, we can design and support schemes to help developing countries face the challenge of recycling scrap electrical appliances (the fastest growing form of waste across Africa and Asia) using systems based on extended producer responsibility (EPR).
The traditional linear economy operates according to a pattern known as ‘extract-make-use-dispose’. As well as placing an excessive burden on the earth’s scare resources, this approach also undermines its ability to act as a ‘sink’ for waste products. We believe that making the economy as circular as possible is the only way to create a sustainable economy; this is also the aim current EU environmental protection legislation is designed to achieve. Finding, designing and implementing sustainable business models in emerging economies is a key step along the road to this objective. That’s why we are ambassadors for the Open Source Circular Economy Days (or OSCE Days), a global project to encourage the development and use of open-source solutions and practical methods to transform the global economy by making it sustainable and circular. As part of the OSCE Days we have held workshops all over the world, including in Amman, Mumbai, Islamabad, Dubai, Seattle and Buenos Aires. One major step towards a circular economy is being able to recover secondary raw materials from waste. With this in mind, BFS is already supporting a number of projects, including systems to improve recycling of electrical goods at the Agbogbloshie landfill site in Accra, Ghana.
Extended producer responsibility (EPR) is a major part of a functioning circular economy. Implementing this principle forces companies to handle resources more efficiently and operate with a greater awareness of their environmental impact.