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Maxis Award winner Mohamed Tarek El-Fatatry's e-waste recycler Erth is using Maxis’ digital solutions to help the country recycle 365,000 tonnes of e-waste
According to a report by the World Economic Forum, it is estimated that the world generated a staggering 57.4 million tonnes of electronic waste, or e-waste, in 2021. The explosive growth of e-waste generated can partly be attributed to many new electronic devices being introduced to the market. It doesn’t help that the shelf lives of these devices are getting shorter and the options to repair them when they break are limited.
Despite its name, e-waste is actually valuable. Some of their components are made up of precious metals like copper, silver, palladium and gold that can be extracted, reused and recycled. But e-waste can contain toxic chemicals that are harmful to the body, such as lead, cadmium, mercury and nickel.
So when disposed of, it is not as simple as throwing an old sock or chair into the landfill. These toxic chemicals can leak into the soil and affect our food and water supply. The World Health Organization warned that if these chemicals affect what we eat and drink, it could increase the risk of cancer and cardiovascular diseases later in life.
In Malaysia, it is estimated that 365,000 tonnes of e-waste are produced yearly. But the country’s Department of Environment reported that it collected just 2,283 tonnes of e-waste in 2021. Mohamed Tarek El-Fatatry, the founder and director of Electronic Recycling Through Heroes (Erth), wants to eradicate the country's e-waste problem by making it more convenient for people to recycle their unwanted electronic devices.
Founded in 2019, the company employs more than 1,000 gig economy freelancers, who they call “Heroes”, to drive around the Klang Valley in Selangor to pick up any unwanted devices from a customer’s doorstep, in exchange for a cash reward.
Read more: This Environmentalist Wants To Make E-Waste A Thing Of The Past
The initial challenge Erth faced was coordinating thousands of customer requests for pickups with the Heroes, while tracking the journey of the e-waste to the facility followed by its delivery to the recycler.
”We used to manually organise jobs for gig workers by WhatsApp, but as our orders grew to thousands, this bottleneck reduced our productivity and started impacting our efficiency,” explains Mohamed Tarek.
In September 2021, Erth was one of two winners of the inaugural Maxis Awards, a programme created in partnership with Gen.T to catalyse the impact of entrepreneurs using digital tools to create meaningful social change.
“Winning the award helped increase the exposure of our work,” says Mohamed Tarek. “Supporting changemakers is another step forward for Maxis towards an innovative and sustainable tech-forward future.”
Erth adopted Maxis’ mWorkforce solution to digitise its operation, helping him in three key areas. The first was improving productivity among his employees and Heroes. With the solution, Erth could assign tasks to its Heroes in real-time as well as track their collection route, verifying their locations with a geo-fencing capability and location stamps.
The mWorkforce solution also facilitated greater transparency and accountability among Erth's Heroes enabling the startup to accurately record all collected items collected, tracking them to ensure it has been processed before it is sent to the recycling centre. In addition, mWorkforce's highly customisable interface enabled the company to create forms and views that cater to its processes. On a whole, Maxis' solution enables Mohamed Tarek to worry less about the day-to-day operations and focus on improving Erth's operations and generate reports of its activities.
Mohamed Tarek says Erth is just starting its journey and is focused on growing its capacity to collect e-waste by at least 10 times. Check back here in three months to see how far Erth has grown its business to help save the planet.
Read more about the Maxis Awards and how it aims to empower Malaysians.