Correios offers free disposal of electronics in 6 thousand branches

Starting this month, the Post Office will begin receiving electronic equipment for disposal in more than 6,000 agencies that offer the Balcão do Cidadão service. The initiative, carried out in partnership with Circular Brain, is free and does not require prior scheduling.

To use the service, the consumer must place the equipment in a box with a total weight of up to 30 kg and take it open to a participating agency.

The attendant closes the package at the time of posting. The customer then provides their name, CPF, address, email and telephone number and receives proof of shipping.

Cell phones, notebooks, tablets, headphones, cables and other small electronic equipment can be discarded. Batteries, batteries and lamps are not accepted in this modality.

After posting, the materials are sent to the Circulare Network, operated by Circular Brain, which directs each shipment to the nearest approved recycler. The process is tracked until the final destination of the waste.

According to 2022 data from the Global E-waste Statistics Partnership, an initiative of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) and the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (Unitar), Brazil generates around 2.4 million tons of electronic waste per year.

Of this total, only around 3% is formally collected.

According to Correios, the initiative seeks to expand the population's access to the proper disposal of these materials.

The Post Office is present in all Brazilian municipalities and has more than 10 thousand branches, although the new service will initially be available in the more than 6 thousand units that offer the Citizen's Counter.

"Millions of Brazilians already use Correios branches in their daily lives. Now, this capillarity also helps the population to find it easier to dispose of unused electronic equipment correctly", says the president of Correios, Emmanoel Rondon, in a statement.

The correct disposal of this waste is also provided for in Brazilian legislation.

The National Solid Waste Policy (Law No. 12,305/2010) and Decree No. 10,240/2020 determine that electronics manufacturers, importers, distributors and traders create systems to collect products discarded by consumers and send them to the correct destination, such as recycling. This process is called reverse logistics.

The launch takes place in October, the month in which International Electronic Waste Day is celebrated on the 14th, a date dedicated to raising awareness about the importance of properly disposing of these materials.