The recycling of telecommunication products - a case study in a Brazilian company

The environmental regulations are becoming stricter all over the world. Additionally, consumers are requiring that their products encompass environmentally friendly features and some governments are imposing them in order to trade goods. The Brazilian Parliament is debating a law project on environmental issues, which involves, amongst others, the "take back policy". This paper presents a case study on a class of products used extensively in telecommunication field (optical and metallic cables). These products are manufactured by a leading company (Furukawa Industrial S.A.) in Brazil, which has recently been certified with the ISO 14001. The impacts of this kind of law on the products design and company's environmental strategy are discussed and based in this study, a preliminary solution for recycling these products is presented.