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 consumer awareness, take-back and collection, product reuse, repair & recycling. This blog series explores solar e-waste ecosystems and provides insights into each company’s unique challenges and opportunities.
“Our Solar E-Waste Challenge project is trying to prove that larger companies in this space can participate in environmental protection and help smaller companies that do not necessarily have the same capacity and resources to manage e-waste for themselves.” -Silver Tulyamureba, Home Service Specialist at ENGIE Energy Access Uganda.
ENGIE Energy Access is the result of French energy leader ENGIE’s successful integration of Fenix International, ENGIE Mobisol and ENGIE PowerCorner, that was announced in October 2020. As one of the leading off-grid, Pay-As-You-Go (PAYGo) solar and mini-grid solutions providers in Africa, ENGIE Energy Access serves over 1 million customers and impacts more than 5 million lives in 9 countries — Uganda, Zambia, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, Nigeria, Benin, Côte d’Ivoire and Mozambique.
As a pioneer in the PAYGo solar model in sub-Saharan Africa, ENGIE Energy Access is using the expertise it built up while operating as Fenix International in Uganda, and the country’s dispersed rural customer base, to pilot an ambitious end-of-life lead acid battery collection pilot.
Extending Quality Customer Service to E-Waste Collection
Over the past 7 years, ENGIE Energy Access has grown their innovative business model to serve rural customers through a broad network of sales agents and unique distribution partnerships with major telecom providers like MTN. Through partnership, the company has increased consumer trust in new technology and driven adoption in underserved markets.
At the core of their operations is a commitment to customers. Beyond providing high-quality, cost-effective clean energy solutions, ENGIE Energy Access prides themselves on exceptional after-sales service to reach dispersed rural customers through a network of over 60 service centers and 2 call centers speaking over 60 languages.
“Our highest priority is putting the customer first and making sure they have the experience they deserve,” articulated Tulyamureba.
ENGIE Energy Access provides a 3-year warranty on all solar products, offering repair and replacement services for faulty products. “Through our warranty program, we have been able to maintain and control our e-waste levels — especially for batteries. Our customers are accustomed to coming to our service centres and interacting with service agents,” explained Tulyamureba.
The company often extends repair and replace services for products even after warranty, “If a customer has had their unit for 4.5 years and the battery is no longer functioning, we offer a battery swap for cheap. We offer this service to ensure we are getting back as much e-waste as we possibly can.”
Products that cannot be repaired are sent to ENGIE Energy Access’ recycling partner, fellow Solar E-Waste Challenge Winner Enviroserve Rwanda.
A Complex E-Waste Market in Uganda
While there are no formal e-waste recyclers operating in Uganda, the market is characterized by a highly complex network of informal collectors, aggregators and recyclers. At the top of the e-waste value chain are a few powerful entrepreneurs who consolidate significant quantities of valuable materials like batteries and scrap metal.
“Lower-level, more rural collectors procure materials from community members and sell them on to middle-men for cheap. Materials move up the value chain before reaching an aggregation site in medium-sized cities like Jinja,” Tulyamureba described.
As the materials move up the value chain, components with little or no value are discarded into the environment by burning, burying, or throwing into a water source. Once materials reach high-level aggregators, some are sold and shipped out of Uganda for processing or recycling abroad. Scrap metals are actively recycled and sent to smelting plants in-country.
One of the most hazardous e-waste materials are lead acid batteries. Improperly disposed batteries cause soil contamination and contribute to lead exposure and poisoning. Batteries are considered the weakest link in solar home systems and pico-solar products, and are usually the first to breakdown. The majority of lead acid battery recyclers in Uganda are unlicensed and operate in dangerous environments without formal training in recycling.
With the Solar E-Waste Challenge, ENGIE Energy Access saw an opportunity to partner with the informal sector to collect end-of-life (EoL) components –particularly lead acid batteries — and forward them for recycling at Enviroserve.
The Global LEAP Awards Solar E-Waste Challenge
Through the Solar E-Waste Challenge, ENGIE Energy Access will utilize their last-mile presence to collect non-ENGIE components, especially batteries, in close collaboration with the informal sector. They will develop a competitive incentive scheme to purchase the batteries from scrap dealers and map out the informal sector landscape. Their Solar E-Waste Challenge project aims to:
- Develop and implement a comprehensive incentive structure for lead acid battery buyback
- Collect 15 tonnes of e-waste and forward for safe recycling and disposal.
- Rollout the pilot in Central and Eastern Uganda
“The Global LEAP Awards presented an opportunity for us to do some experiments. We had an e-waste strategy, but no flexibility to pilot new ideas for collection of non-ENGIE products. As a large multi-national company, we have the advantage of a big field presence, extensive data collection capacity, and widespread talented staff. We suspected that we could use our resources better and to the benefit of the wider sector.”
Through the Challenge, ENGIE Energy Access hopes to collect enough components to off-set the cost of collection and recycling. “This is the experiment we are running — how do the economics work to make this either a commercially viable enterprise or at least a project where we are not losing significant sums of money?”
Next Steps
At the core of their Challenge project is environmental and consumer protection. The team hopes that their model will encourage other large solar companies to pilot and scale similar e-waste collection models in markets across the continent.
“For us, the Challenge is also trying to prove that larger companies in this space can participate in environmental protection and help smaller companies that do not necessarily have the same capacity and resources to also do this for themselves.”
As the Solar E-Waste Challenge projects wrap up this month, the Global LEAP Awards is developing comprehensive case studies on each of the 8 projects. The case studies will be shared in March 2021.
