ITOCHU Corporation (headquartered in Minato-ku, Tokyo; Keita Ishii, President & COO; hereinafter “ITOCHU”) announced today that it is launching the E-waste Compensation program for corporate users in partnership with Closing the Loop (headquartered in Amsterdam, the Netherlands; Joost de Kluijver, President & Chief Executive Officer; hereinafter “CTL”) which collects and recycles electronic waste (e-waste) such as mobile phones in Africa. The program recycles a mobile device in Africa every time a new device is sold in Japan.

It is said that globally e-waste is the fastest-growing type of waste, collected mostly from industrialized nations and disposed of illegally in developing nations. Globally, 53.6 million tons of e-waste were produced in 2019 and this is expected to reach 110 million tons by 2050.*¹
In the world’s largest e-waste dump in Agbogbloshie, Ghana and other dumping sites, many people burn e-waste to retrieve the metallic components and earn money and many more people are suffering from grave health problems due to the toxic gases produced by the sites.

CTL is a leading recycling company and the only company around the world that collects and recycles e-waste in Africa. It is also the first organization of its kind to be approved by a third-party certifier of IT products. *² The CTL E-waste Compensation program that collects and recycles an end-of-life device in Africa for every new mobile device or other electronic device manufactured or distributed, so that it adds the same level of compensation. CTL supports the improvement of local workers’ labor environment by purchasing and collecting mobile devices for prices higher than what they are able to earn from hazardous disposal methods such as open burning in developing nations. Moreover, the collected devices are shipped to recycling facilities with advanced technology in EU countries and recycled properly.

ITOCHU, in partnership with CTL, is launching the E-waste Compensation program for corporate users for the first time in Japan. To begin with, the program will be provided to FCNT Limited (headquartered in Yamato-shi, Kanagawa; Michitaka Tanaka, President & Chief Executive Officer; hereinafter “FCNT”), a mobile phone manufacturer. FCNT will recycle one mobile phone that has been disposed of in Africa every time it sells one unit of its new arrows N F-51C model being released by NTT DoCoMo on February 10.
Moving forward, ITOCHU will promote the use of this program as an approach to the SDGs for companies that purchase and use mobile devices while expanding the program to mobile device manufacturers and communication carriers by utilizing ITOCHU’s domestic and overseas networks that have been built to date in the mobile phone distribution sector.

ITOCHU’s targets laid out in the basic policy of its medium-term management plan are realizing business transformation by shifting to a market-oriented perspective and enhancing our contribution to and engagement with the SDGs through business activities. Through this project, ITOCHU aims to contribute to the development of a sustainable society by effectively using our limited resources.

The E-waste Compensation program sorts and manages devices collected in Africa and properly recycles them in Europe.

Product information　https://www.fmworld.net/product/phone/f-51c/