From product design, to packaging, to documentation, through end of useful life, Cisco looks at how to reduce waste. Cisco engineering, manufacturing, and supply-chain teams explore the problem and find solutions: new processes, new ways to use materials, and new designs.

By designing products for easy disassembly, we can make recycling of components easier and more efficient.

By making packaging parts out of one material or easily separated materials, we can simplify and encourage the task of recycling.

By redesigning packaging for products and for subassemblies that move between manufacturing sites, we can drastically reduce the materials needed.

By offering customers trade-in, takeback, and recycling opportunities, we can extend the life of some products and encourage responsible recycling and disposal of the others.

By reclaiming materials from products returned to Cisco, we can help reduce further need to extract primary materials from the environment.

Introduction
Cisco end-of-life programs reduce the overall impact on the environment and help decrease customer costs to track, store, and manage excess or obsolete products.

Read more about our customer takeback and recycle programs.

Return, Reuse, Recycle
Cisco offers customers several returns programs.

Cisco Technology Migration Program

This program offers new product discount incentives through resellers so that customers may trade in fully or partially depreciated equipment. The program is designed to encourage responsible reuse or recycling of older equipment while offering an incentive to customers who upgrade their network equipment. Cisco then either refurbishes the returned equipment, reuses it in Cisco labs, or disposes of it through safe and sustainable methods.

Contact your account manager to take advantage of this program.

The Cisco Takeback and Recycle Program

This program helps businesses to properly return and recycle products that they no longer need. All business users of Cisco equipment and its associated brands and subsidiaries may participate.

Under the program:

• All Cisco branded products are accepted.
• Cisco recycles returned equipment in a manner that meets or exceeds current environmental regulations.
• On request, Cisco provides a Certificate of Destruction to release the customer from further liability for equipment returned through this program.

Upon pre-approval, Cisco works with customers to recycle other IT products.

Contact us | mailto:weee-ops@external.cisco.com Cisco Takeback and Recycle Program to obtain approval.

More Information
Find Takeback and Recycle Program information by Country
Read Terms and Conditions
Take Steps to Initiate a Cisco Takeback and Recycle Request
Submit Pick-up Form
Contact Cisco
Print Customer Brochure (PDF - 145 KB)
Get More Detail on Recycling Programs

Waste from Electrical and Electronic Equipment

WEEE Compliance Information
Cisco closely monitors regulations relating to product end of life and adheres to all applicable legislation worldwide. In Europe, Cisco has gone beyond the requirements in the European Union (EU) Directive on Waste from Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) by registering as a producer in all EU countries where Cisco is permitted to do so, despite not generally being defined as the producer.

In 2010, a limited number of Cisco products were affected by regulations in jurisdictions outside the EU. Cisco has ensured the requirements of the legislation are met as applicable. Cisco will continue to closely monitor developing legislation in many countries and jurisdictions, including Argentina, Brazil, China, the EU, and India to understand the scope and help ensure that we meet all applicable requirements.

Cisco continues to take a leading role with the United Nations (UN) effort known as Solving the E-Waste Problem Program, working within the Global Policy and Recycling task forces. Cisco has become a co-leader for the EU WEEE directive within the Environmental Policy Group of Digital Europe, an association that combines 39 national digital technology associations from 28 European countries with over 61 direct company members.

Through the Environmental Policy Group, Cisco is working with industry peers to respect all applicable environmental legislation, while allowing the information and communications technology (ICT) sector to prosper.

Cisco has developed a global closed-loop reverse supply chain that allows us to recover and reuse or recycle more than 99 percent of our returned electronic equipment in major markets worldwide, helping to ensure that products returned to Cisco remain out of landfill sites.

The Cisco Takeback and Recycle Program is designed for customers to dispose properly of surplus products that have reached end-of-useful-life status. The program is open to all business users of Cisco branded equipment. Products that are returned go to a recycler that de-manufactures, shreds, and sorts materials into the fraction commodities that are either sold or given to downstream recyclers for use in new products.

The crossed-out wheelie bin symbol as required by the WEEE Directive indicates that the product was placed on the market after August 13, 2005, and that end users should segregate the product from other waste at end of life.

More Information

• Takeback and Recycle Program information by Country
• EU WEEE Position Statement
• WEEE Registrations: At a Glance

Video on Demand
Takeback and Recycle in Brief (3 min)
Watch this overview of WEEE and how it applies to Cisco programs that keep products out of landfill.

Cisco Position
European Union Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive
http://www.cisco.com/web/about/ac227/ac228/ac231/WEEE/EUWEEEstatement.html

Cisco is committed to meeting the requirements of the European Union (EU) Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Directive. This directive requires producers of electrical and electronic equipment to finance the takeback, for reuse or recycling, of their products placed on the EU market after August 13, 2005.

Cisco products that are within the scope of the directive are labeled with a crossed-out wheelie-bin symbol, as the directive requires. The symbol indicates that the product was placed on the market after August 13, 2005, and that end users should segregate the product from other waste at end of life.

The WEEE directive has been implemented in each of the 27 EU countries through national legislation. Norway and Switzerland have implemented similar pieces of legislation. As a result, the detailed requirements vary considerably throughout the EU, and the Cisco WEEE compliance approach varies among countries. In each country affected by the WEEE legislation:

• Cisco offers a product takeback service to its business customers.
• Cisco seeks to register as a producer wherever local legislation requires or permits it to do so.
• For Cisco consumer products, including all Linksys products, compliance will be achieved through membership of an appropriate national compliance scheme.

Crossed-out Wheelie Bin Statement
http://www.cisco.com/web/about/citizenship/environment/crossedOutBin.html

Regulatory and Statute Information
http://www.cisco.com/web/about/ac227/ac228/ac231/WEEE/RCSInexus.html

Cisco sustainable packaging efforts reduce the amount and type of packing materials and the optional peripherals that often automatically ship with new products.

Read more about our product packaging and accompanying materials.