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Title page E-waste Compensation Minimum Requirements

Leveling the playing field for E-waste Compensation

3 min read
Profile photo of Stefan de LindeStefan de LindeFounder & CEO

Until recently, e-waste compensation operated without common rules. Organizations could collect discarded hardware, call it waste offset, and present it to buyers without demonstrating real additionality or supply chain verification. The PREVENT Waste Alliance, hosted by GIZ, collaborated with Minimise and other industry partners to publish the Minimum Requirements for Electronic Waste Compensation Services.

Why standardizing waste compensation matters

Establishing a shared set of rules lowers the barrier to entry for new players in the circular economy. Without clear guidelines, new service providers must build compliance, tracking, and environmental baseline models from scratch. Standardizing expectations gives new entrants a straightforward framework to launch credible e-waste collection and recycling services.

Setting industry baselines protects the market from greenwashing. When brands purchase waste compensation, they need assurance that their money finances waste management that would not have happened otherwise. The baseline rules explicitly define additionality, preventing providers from claiming compensation on high-value metals like copper or aluminum that informal markets already recover for profit. Instead, services must address neglected, low-value, or hazardous components that usually end up dumped or burned.

Clear guidance also helps companies communicate their environmental actions accurately. The framework discourages vague terms like waste neutral, encouraging transparent claims that reflect actual material recovery and support for circular practices.

How this framework helps the buyers and service providers:

  • Lowering entry barriers by giving new service providers clear operational rules
  • Providing security and comparability for buyers between service providers
  • Setting expectations towards third-party audits and mass balance verification
  • Ensuring financial support goes toward zero-value and hazardous waste fractions
  • Including labor standards and human rights across waste collection networks
  • Working towards extended producer responsibility systems without replacing local regulation

Scope and contents of the framework

The publication establishes baseline requirements for service providers and subcontractors offering voluntary e-waste compensation services.

  • The standards apply across all waste electrical and electronic equipment categories including large appliances, consumer electronics, and batteries.
  • Qualifying activities must respect the reduce, reuse, recycle hierarchy and focus strictly on post-consumer devices that have reached the end of their useful life.
  • Service providers must handle complete devices rather than selectively harvesting valuable metals like copper wire or printed circuit boards.
  • Compensation cannot be claimed for hardware already covered under mandatory extended producer responsibility regulations or existing corporate recycling contracts.
  • Operational financing must cover all fractions, including zero-value and hazardous waste fractions such as cathode ray tube glass, mercury-containing lamps, and brominated plastics.
  • Providers must complete a self-declaration documenting local waste generation data, intervention plans, material mass balance calculations, and proof of safer downstream treatment.

Full publication

Minimum Requirements for Electronic Waste Compensation Services, details these baseline standards and implementation frameworks. Download the publication directly from the PREVENT Waste Alliance website.

The framework was produced with financial support from the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development. The publication was developed collaboratively by members of the PREVENT Waste Alliance Working Group on E-Waste: