Mexico, first supplier in the US of recycled electronic devices

Ivette Saldaña, The financier

 Engines, gears, alternators, injectors, diesel engines, game consoles, routers and cell phones are recycled in Mexico and then send them to the United States.

Mexican businessmen managed to find in the remanufacturing of electronic devices and auto parts a great business and thus, in 2011, they made our country the leading supplier of remanufactured goods to the United States, displacing the European Union and China from the first two places.
The director of the Foreign Trade Committee of the National Council of the Maquiladora and Export Manufacturing Industry, Israel Morales, reported that our country's assembly industry annually exports close to 4,000 million dollars of such products to the United States, which means savings from 40 to 70% of the cost of a new device.

It is about "providing a useful life to the products after the first useful life" and that, in addition to reducing polluting emissions, allows the country to generate foreign exchange, since in the first quarter of 2013 nearly 1,000 million dollars of remanufactured products, Morales said.
That amount represents 1 percent of the size of the international market that the World Trade Organization estimates at 100,000 million dollars.
Due to the importance of the issue and the lack of regulation for the management of waste and electronic waste In the country, the Congress of the Union makes adjustments to the General Law for the Prevention and Comprehensive Management of Waste to regulate the process known as 3R, reduction, reuse and recycling of goods.
Last April the Senate of the Republic approved modifications to said law to strengthen the regulation and comprehensive management of 'electronic waste'. For example, definitions are included on the reduction, reuse, recycling, collection, storage, transport and final disposal of electronic waste, among other adjustments currently being analyzed by the Environment Commission of the Chamber of Deputies, according to information from the Upper House.

They are maquiladora companies that daily recycle and remanufacture computers, engines, hard drives, monitors, aircraft parts, among many other things. An electrical control that turns on and off the lights of an airplane is disassembled, it is checked component by component to see if it passes the quality control and stress tests, and the parts that did not pass are replaced to put the panel back together, Morales explained.

Currently fifty companies in the Manufacturing, Maquiladora and Export Services Industry (Immex) in our country, which employ 308,000 workers, are dedicated to this activity and, depending on their sector, import used goods and electronic waste, which add up to a volume of 108,700 tons.

Throughout the process, high technologies are applied to restore and leave a product as new; In addition, Mexico complies with the provisions of the Basel Convention on appropriate electronic waste management to avoid contamination of the environment, due to the amount of metals used in electronic goods and that could cause a risk to human health.