Fairphone en Race Against Waste join forces for circulair project in Zaanstad!

Elementary schools in Zaanstad recently started the E-waste Race project. The project is an initiative of Dutch phone manufacturer Fairphone and Race Against Waste. Both parties want to inspire young, green thinkers and doers of the future and create awareness about the consequences of electronic waste. The E-waste Race will take place from May 29 to June 22 for elementary schools in Zaanstad.

During the E-waste Race, ten elementary schools in Zaanstad will participate in this E-waste race. For example, students will collect e-waste themselves, campaign and they can have appliances repaired at a Repair Café. They will also learn through a guest lesson about scarcity of resources and the importance of reusing, repairing and recycling electronic devices. Awareness around e-waste is proving to be much needed. Research by Fairphone shows that only 20% of smartphones sold are properly recycled. If we look at all electronics in the Netherlands, it is even about 50% that is not collected and therefore cannot be reused or recycled. As a result, e-waste has become one of the fastest growing waste streams worldwide. Fairphone is committed to solving this problem as a sponsor of the E-waste Race.

Fairphone is building a market for ethical phones, motivating the industry to act more responsibly and pioneering more sustainable ways to make smartphones. One way they do this is by making phones that are completely e-waste neutral. This means that for every Fairphone phone and part that Fairphone sells, another end-of-life phone or part is reused or recycled.

With this partnership, Fairphone aims to offset the materials used to produce the phones by collecting as many materials. During an E-waste Race, children from ten schools collect thousands of kilos of electronics, which of course totally contributes to this goal!

Residents of the city Zaanstad can register their e-waste via www.ewasterace.nl which will be collected at home by one of the participating schools of the E-waste Race, excluding loose batteries or accumulators.