The Global LEAP Awards are an international competition to identify and promote the world’s best, most energy-efficient off-grid appliances. In 2019, the Global LEAP Awards launched the inaugural Solar E-Waste Challenge to identify innovations in solar e-waste management across sub-Saharan Africa. Through a rigorous evaluation process, the competition selected eight winners spanning five countries to implement projects in take-back and collection, consumer awareness, and product recycling & reuse. This blog series explores solar e-waste ecosystems and provides insights into each company’s unique challenges and opportunities.
“We understand that in order to operate sustainably, we must proactively take responsibility for all our e-waste and not just warranty returns. It is possible that e-waste collection is an opportunity to gain new customers and also provide high quality lighting that positively impacts lives.”
-Charlotte Heffer, Senior Partnerships Manager, d.light
Background
In many parts of rural Kenya, the name “d.light” is synonymous with solar lanterns. d.light was one of the early actors of the off-grid solar industry, founded in 2008 with the mission to eradicate the kerosene lamp. In 2020, d.light achieved their longstanding goal of 100,000,000 lives impacted and are now transitioning towards providing a wider array of sustainable products that will positively impact customers’ quality of life and a focus on sustainable solar e-waste management.
Operating in a Challenging E-Waste Environment
d.light operates around the world through partners or vertically-integrated operations. In vertically integrated markets, they have developed robust logistics routes to reach widespread rural customers and retrieve products for repair and EoL management. d.light will be implementing their Global LEAP Awards Solar E-Waste Challenge project in Kenya, their biggest market with most established take-back, repair and EoL management processes. Across country operations, their e-waste management protocols vary according to available infrastructure and e-waste service providers.
“All of our country operations have different experiences when it comes to e-waste management. In Kenya we are partnered with Enviroserve Kenya. In Uganda, we did our first e-waste collection and processing in 2018 through a partner in Tanzania. In Tanzania we conducted our first e-waste processing in 2017 and have very close partnerships in-country. In Nigeria, we partner with an e-waste processor. In Ethiopia, the government does not allow any processing of e-waste in country — all e-waste must be shipped back to country of origin,” explained Wilson Wambugu, Quality Assurance Manager- Africa at d.light.
With inconsistent and often poorly enforced e-waste management regulations across the region, identifying partners and developing management and processing plans poses a challenge for companies like d.light. However, d.light is looking to partner with processing companies across Africa that can coordinate from all countries and standardize e-waste protocols.
Barriers to Take-Back and Collection
In addition to identifying reliable local e-waste management partners, retrieving EoL and out-of-warranty (OoW) products from consumers poses a significant barrier. Research from the Efficiency for Access Coalition shows that take-back and collection is a unique challenge for the off-grid solar sector. With poor access to e-waste collection points and little incentive to travel to urban hubs to return products to the distributors, customers living in hard-to-reach rural areas hold onto products at home or dispose of them in latrines, bushes, lakes, or bury them.
Anecdotal evidence suggests customers are often hesitant to relinquish them, believing that they may hold some residual monetary value. d.light is incorporating incentives into their Challenge project to encourage customers to both return products and continue using high-quality solar solutions.
Charlotte Heffer, Senior Partnerships Manager, says that d.light is concerned about the quality of solar products entering consumers’ homes: “We are trying to increase collection and also ensure that customers have access to high-quality, VeraSol-certified products. We want to simultaneously reduce e-waste and ensure that users, particularly from low-income households, that made a decision to switch to solar, don’t have to go back to candles or kerosene just because they may have bought cheap, poor quality products. Under this initiative people can return any broken solar product and gain access an affordable good quality product.”
Through their Challenge project, customers can return non-functioning solar products, regardless of brand or affiliation, to d.light designated e-waste collection points in two provinces in Kenya to receive a 50% discount on a d.light S3 light.
d.light’s Global LEAP Awards Solar E-Waste Challenge Project
Along with the incentive scheme, over the course of the 12-month Solar E-Waste Challenge implementation period, d.light plans to:
- Establish collection points for non-functioning solar products at d.light experience centers and regional distribution locations in Kenya
- Produce, air, and monitor radio campaigns in Nyanza and Western Kenya that encourage consumers to return non-functioning solar products
- Collect data on types, quantities and usage of returned products
d.light hopes to test the assumption that non-quality verified products reach EoL sooner than verified products. Non-affiliate products, which make up an estimated 71% of pico-solar sales globally, do not come with warranties and manufacturers do not take responsibility when they reach EoL. A negative experience with one product could affect a customer’s perception of the technology more widely. However, little is known about non-affiliate products and users’ experiences with them.
“The Challenge project will also provide valuable data for the wider sector on quantities and types of non-affiliate products. The off-grid solar industry speaks anecdotally around non-quality verified products, estimating their lifespan to be less than a year, but actually we don’t know. The data that we and the other Challenge winners will collect can help build better awareness of actual life cycles of non-quality verified products,” explained Heffer.
d.light wants to encourage other solar distributors to incorporate collection into their business models, “We understand that in order to operate sustainably, we must proactively take responsibility for all our e-waste and not just warranty returns. It is possible that e-waste collection is an opportunity to gain new customers and also provide high quality lighting that positively impacts lives.”
COVID-19 Impact
In a bid to comply with both the health and safety practices recommended by global and national regulators in response to COVID-19, the Solar E-Waste Challenge Grantees have adjusted their operations. While already making significant progress on their Challenge projects, Grantees have reviewed activities and strategized to focus on deliverables that can be achieved remotely and with minimum physical movement. The Challenge emphasizes that during this time, our priority is the health and safety of Grantee staff, field teams and customers.
