Carbon and circularity must be addressed together

Organizations are under increasing pressure to deliver on ambitious climate targets while navigating rising costs, resource constraints, and growing e-waste.

Circularity is one of the most effective, and underutilized, solutions available. By extending product lifetimes, reducing demand for virgin materials, and keeping products and components in use, circular approaches directly address the largest sources of emissions across the electronics lifecycle. For many products, this means tackling emissions at their source before they are ever created..

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Practical Experiences with the Basel Convention: Challenges, Good Practice and Ways to Improve Transboundary Movements of E-Waste in Low and Middle Income countries

Facilitating Trade Along Circular Electronics Value Chains

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For most organizations, Scope 3 emissions, especially from purchased electronics, represent a significant share of their total footprint. Circular strategies provide a clear, actionable way to reduce these emissions today.

• Refurbishment and reuse reduce the need for new manufacturing

• Repair extends product life and avoids replacement emissions

• Recycled content lowers the carbon intensity of materials

Together, these approaches enable organizations to cut emissions across both Scope 3 and, in many cases, Scope 1 and 2 operations.

The opportunity is significant: circular interventions can deliver substantial emissions reductions, with some applications showing dramatically lower carbon impacts compared to new products.
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Despite the clear potential, many organizations face challenges in fully integrating circularity into their climate strategies. A key barrier is the lack of consistent, practical guidance on how to measure and account for the carbon impact of circular activities.

The CEP has convened leaders to address that gap by helping organizations:

• Identify where circular strategies can deliver the greatest carbon reductions
• Understand the emissions hotspots across the product lifecycle
• Navigate current carbon accounting approaches and methodologies
• Make informed decisions that align circular actions with climate targets
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Circularity is not only critical for decarbonization, it is a strategic advantage.

Organizations that embed circular approaches can reduce costs, strengthen supply chain resilience, unlock new business models, and meet growing expectations from customers, regulators, and investors.

This is about more than reducing emissions.
It is about building a more efficient, competitive, and future-ready electronics system.

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The Carbon Impact of Circular Electronics

By improving how we measure and communicate the carbon benefits of circularity, organizations can more confidently scale these solutions, unlock investment, and align stakeholders across the value chain. Access The Carbon Impact of Circular Electronics to understand where circularity delivers the greatest carbon reductions and how your organization can act.

Download the report to: Identify high-impact opportunities for emissions reduction; Strengthen your Scope 3 strategy; Align circular actions with climate targets; and Drive measurable progress toward net zero.

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The Carbon Impact of Circular Electronics

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