Swiss E-Waste Collection Breaks Records: Comprehensive Analysis of 2025 Results

The management of electronic waste (e-waste) in Switzerland reached a historic milestone in 2025. For the first time in the country’s history, the amount of e-waste processed by SENS eRecycling and Swico Recycling exceeded 140,000 tonnes. The latest technical report from the two leading recycling systems—headed by Pasqual Zopp and Jon Fanzun—reveals that these achievements represent more than just a theoretical, quantitative record; they have measurably reduced Switzerland’s total annual environmental impact by exactly 1%.

Processed E-Waste Volume at a Historic Peak

The growth trend observed in recent years continued unbroken in 2025. According to official statistical data, the volume of processed waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) exceeded the previous year’s figures by 6 percent, successfully surpassing the previously seemingly unattainable threshold of 140,000 tonnes. The comprehensive report highlights the important fact that this increase was evident across almost all examined device categories. SENS eRecycling and Swico—operating as voluntary industry organizations for over 30 years—have built a nationwide collection network, a strict quality standard system, and a reliable waste management infrastructure that delivers outstanding performance even on a global scale.

Quantified Climate Protection: An Outstanding Ecological Balance

During 2025, the two involved organizations published their comprehensive, joint ecological balance report for the first time. This document substantiates the environmental benefits of the professional collection of e-waste, the removal of hazardous substances, and recycling with concrete figures. The combined added environmental benefit of the systems reaches 1,400 billion Environmental Impact Points (UBP), which translates to exactly 236,600 tonnes of CO2-eq savings when expressed in carbon dioxide equivalents.

To make these abstract indicators more tangible: the saved 1,400 billion UBP is approximately equal to the total annual environmental impact of the entire population of the city of Biel. Furthermore, the 236,600 tonnes of CO2-equivalent emission reduction is comparable to the entire annual traffic emissions of the city of Lausanne. Through these complex environmental protection measures, Switzerland’s annual environmental impact has decreased by 1%, which is a highly remarkable achievement for a single sectoral measure.

Innovations, Accidents, and New Challenges in Waste Management

Technological advancement and the constantly changing material composition of devices require new approaches and solutions from the sector. The report focused on the following key areas during the subject year:

• Photovoltaic panels (solar panels): The successful partnership between Swissolar and SENS eRecycling, ongoing since 2013, was expanded in 2025 with the integration of a completely new recycling plant. The innovative technological process applied here, which includes a pyrolysis step, enables higher-quality material recovery from the rapidly growing number of solar panels than ever before.

• E-cigarettes: Disposable electronic cigarettes generate an increasingly significant and problematic volume of waste. Experts successfully conducted batch tests to determine the actual recycling rate of these small devices, with a specific focus on extracting the valuable “black mass.”

• Cables and material composition (SwicoMix): Analyzing 20 years of empirical data, the “SwicoMix” project revealed that the proportion of metals in e-waste is continuously and measurably decreasing, which directly impacts traditional recycling rates. Concurrently, the increasing proportion of plastics and quality fluctuations pose growing challenges during tests. A paradigm shift has also occurred regarding cables: instead of mere copper extraction and thermal recovery of plastics, a much more differentiated analysis of material composition and recovery pathways is now taking place.

• Hazardous substances and risks: For the first time, Swiss laboratories systematically investigated the presence, concentration, and risks of PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) in various e-waste fractions. They also highlighted the critical fire hazard caused by increasingly widespread lithium-ion batteries, following a fire at the regional collection center (RAZ) in Kreuzlingen—which, according to the report, occurred on a new employee’s fourth day of work—that largely destroyed the hall.

• Cooling appliances: The recycling of cooling appliances has evolved from a simple material recovery process into a central tool for climate protection through the systematic extraction of climate-relevant gases.

Regulatory Reforms and the Era of ReUse

Although Switzerland is not a member of the European Union and possesses independent legal, institutional, and technical frameworks in the field of e-waste management, the country actively and rapidly responds to global macro-trends, including the tightening of the Basel Convention and the impending “EU Circular Economy Act.”

In this spirit, the Swiss parliament established the modern legal foundations for the preparation for reuse (ReUse) of electronic devices at the beginning of 2025 by revising the Environmental Protection Act (USG). The goal is to extend the lifespan of products and radically mitigate the ecological burdens arising from new manufacturing. This new strategic direction is supported in practice by several concrete pilot projects:

• Swico’s pilot project investigates how everyday items (mobile phones, laptops, and tablets) can be specifically collected and quality-tested for reuse alongside the existing recycling infrastructure.

• The “Swiss PV Circle” initiative explores the possibilities for the continued use of used photovoltaic modules within the Swiss market.

The legal certainty and credibility of the system are reinforced by the fact that since 2007, 10 Swiss cantons have delegated the enforcement of the VREG (Ordinance on the Return, the Taking Back and the Disposal of Electrical and Electronic Equipment) to SENS and Swico. This is an excellent example of the successful synergy between state supervision and the private sector’s expertise. Furthermore, the Technical Commission (Technische Kommission SENS/Swico) operating within the organizations focused on digitalization, new auditing tools (RepTool), and supply chain monitoring in 2025.

References and Source Attribution:

Original source: Fachbericht 2026 – SENS eRecycling and Swico Recycling