Benchmarking Take-Back Offers Online: Producers’ collection and information accessibility for mobile phone consumers in the EU

Abstract: The research aims at reviewing how mobile phone producers in the EU are approaching individual obsolete phone collection from private households in terms of the information provided on their websites, in addition to the collective schemes that they may be part of for complying with the WEEE Directive. In this study, competitive benchmarking was used to differentiate the accessibility level of take-back offers among the selected producers. The availability of the take-back offer and the penetration rate in the EU states are examined into a five-level metrics. The results reveal that producers have extreme offers on the availability aspect and diverging information coverage in different countries. It is inferred that a producer’s attitude toward the product take-back affects the accessibility of their take-back offers, which can be explained by several economic concerns; however, different methods in future research is needed to further investigate the reasons behind different producers’ choices.