Cities across Europe are investing heavily in circular economy initiatives, yet one critical challenge remains unresolved: how to get products back. While enormous attention is devoted to recycling technologies, material recovery, and reverse supply chains, the weakest link is often the very first step of the process: collection.
A recent guide from the INCREACE project on electronic waste collection offers valuable lessons for urban logistics professionals. Its central message is simple: collection is not primarily a waste-management problem. It is a logistics and customer-experience challenge.
The Hidden Inventory in Our Homes
Europe continues to miss many of its e-waste collection targets. Millions of phones, laptops, chargers, small appliances, and other electronic devices never enter formal collection systems. Instead, they remain stored in drawers, cupboards, attics, and garages. The report refers to this phenomenon as “hibernation”—products that are no longer used but have not yet entered a reuse, refurbishment, or recycling channel.
For city logistics professionals, these products represent a hidden urban inventory. Valuable materials are effectively trapped in households, unavailable for circular supply chains.
This creates a fundamental challenge. Reverse logistics networks can only function when products actually enter the system.
Collection Starts Long Before the Collection Point
Many collection programs focus on three traditional levers:
- Awareness campaigns
- Convenient collection infrastructure
- Financial incentives
While important, the research shows these measures alone rarely deliver the desired collection rates. Consumers often know where to return products and may even support recycling in principle, yet still postpone action indefinitely. The reason is that returning products is not merely a physical activity. It is also a behavioral process.
The study identifies five stages that consumers go through before a product is finally returned:
- Recognizing that the product is no longer needed.
- Evaluating disposal options.
- Preparing for separation.
- Physically handing over the product.
- Evaluating the experience afterward.
At every stage, delays can occur. Consumers worry about personal data, emotional attachment, effort, convenience, or simply forget their original intention. From a logistics perspective, these behavioral barriers are often more significant than transportation costs.
Designing Reverse Logistics Around People
The report argues that successful collection systems must be designed around user behavior rather than around operational efficiency alone. Several examples illustrate how this can work. These initiatives demonstrate a shift from waste collection to service logistics.
Philips developed a concept for electric toothbrushes where the packaging of a new product becomes the return package for the old one. The replacement purchase automatically triggers the return process, eliminating unnecessary friction.
Another example is RAEESET in Milan, a digital platform that allows citizens to register electronic devices, locate repair and collection options, and even schedule pick-up services. The platform effectively creates visibility over products that would otherwise disappear into household storage.
What This Means for City Logistics
Urban logistics has traditionally focused on delivering goods efficiently into cities. Circular cities require a second capability: retrieving products efficiently from cities. This requires a different mindset.
Instead of viewing collection as a separate waste-management activity, cities and logistics providers should integrate return flows into existing urban logistics networks. Potential strategies include:
- Combining collections with home deliveries.
- Using parcel locker networks as return points.
- Integrating take-back services into neighborhood hubs.
- Linking collection to replacement purchases.
- Offering scheduled home pick-ups for high-value products.
- Creating digital inventories of household assets.
These approaches reduce friction for consumers while improving collection rates and resource recovery.
The Future of Urban Reverse Logistics
One of the most interesting insights from the report is that collection should not be treated as the end of a product lifecycle. Instead, it should be considered part of the overall customer journey—from purchase to use to return.
For urban logistics professionals, this represents a significant opportunity. Cities already possess sophisticated delivery networks, microhubs, parcel infrastructures, and digital platforms. The next challenge is to use these assets not only to move products to consumers but also to bring valuable products and materials back into circulation.
The circular economy will not succeed because recycling technology improves. It will succeed because collection systems become easy, visible, trusted, and embedded in everyday urban life. In the end, the future of city logistics is not just about delivering goods. It is about recovering value. That starts with designing collection processes that people actually want to use.
Walther Ploos van Amstel.
Also read: Millions of Old Phones Are Sitting in Drawers. And the EU Wants to Change That
Also read: What are the opportunities of e-waste for Dutch logistics companies?
Also read (in Dutch): Amsterdam maakt ruimte voor circulaire logistiek