Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA)
Our product takeback program is most established in the EMEA region. We're in full compliance with the EU WEEE Directive, which is in place in the 27 EU countries, plus Norway and Switzerland.
Customers in Europe can email us through our Web site to let us know that they have equipment they want to return and a pick-up is arranged.
Customers in Norway and Switzerland can also contact us to help them dispose of end-of-life equipment. The process in these countries is essentially the same, although customers must send the equipment to one of our collection centers rather than have it picked up.
United States
The first step in improving our global product takeback program has been to roll out a countrywide program in the U.S., which we began in fiscal 2007. At the time of this writing, there are electronic waste regulations in seven states (California, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, Oregon, Texas, and Washington) and several more under consideration. Rather than build a program based on a patchwork of state regulations, we've developed a countrywide program based on the most stringent of these laws.
The process is similar to that required by the WEEE directive in the EU, and we're using the same asset recovery vendor to ensure consistency and efficiency. One major difference is that in the U.S., customers arrange to send their own equipment to one of three locations. We then dispose of the equipment — free of charge — through remanufacturing, recycling, or safe disposal.
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The Disposal Process
Used Sun computer equipment is either collected by or sent to our asset recovery vendor. There are generally two classes of product returned for disposal:
- Newer products (up to one year old) that are returned because the wrong item was ordered or shipped. Unused products that are returned are typically returned to stock.
- Equipment that has reached the end of its useful life for the customer, usually between three and six years old.
We also accept products returned because they are damaged or have broken parts, but these make up a small number of our returns.
Newer products that cannot be returned to stock and end-of-life products go through a robust process:
- Step 1: Products are checked against a "save list" of products that still have commercial value. Items that can be reused are separated for remanufacturing
- Step 2: Products that cannot be used in remanufacturing are disassembled and components, such as memory or disks, are reused or resold. We also check whether materials, such as aluminum, can be extracted from the equipment and sold on the open market.
- Step 3: Once products are disassembled and useful components and materials are removed for reuse or resale, leftover materials such as plastics and metals that can't be recovered are broken down for recycling. Anything that can be recycled is, and the remaining parts go to landfill. Typically, less than 5% of any Sun product ends up in landfill.
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