A Long Road

The latest development in the ecophonesavers project involves my discovery of the NPO Terra Renaissance. In an article detailing this organisation's gathering of old phones using collection boxes in zoos across Japan (which can be found here), I found that Terra Renaissance collaborates with the Yasuda Group to provide e-recycling services.

Upon this discovery, I reached out to the Yasuda Group via email and calling to no avail. I wanted to gain the approval of the business to bring my own devices to the recycling facility and document the recycling process. Consequently, I contacted a member of Terra Renaissance who then contacted a representative of the Yasuda Group on my behalf. As a result, I discovered that the metal recycling processes are subcontracted to many businesses each specialising in a variety of metal. This prevented me from observing and recording the procedure by which electronics and destroyed and recycled.

My goal is to document an e-recycling procedure to increase the transparency about how data privacy is protected by recycling. I am progressively working on a different method to achieve this objective.