LAUSR

As the saying goes: one man’s trash is another man’s treasure (1).The development of Internet technology has brought earth-shaking changes to the recycling industry, due to the "Internet recycling" policy proposed by the Chinese government since 2015. In 2017 alone, Loving Recycling, a recycling company in China, recycled more than 11 million WEEEs (Waste of Electric and Electronic Equipment) through Internet channels. Online recycler actively develops online reverse supply chain based on website, app and reverse vending machines, which can not only increase the recycling amount, but also promote recycling rate and sustainable utilization of resources (2). However, this does not mean that its development is smooth sailing. As a new type of recycling mode that has been in existence for less than five years, we must clearly identify the challenges it faces and propose targeted solutions. In this letter, we want to emphasize several important issues that online recyclers need to consider in their transactions with traditional offline third-party recyclers (TPR) and consumers. We believe that the attention and solution to these problems can not only improve the profits of online recycler and optimize the recycling mode, but also promote the consumers' awareness of environmental protection. After understanding such issues, scholars can participate in contributing their own views and research to further promote the development of this field. Optimizing recovery services The biggest advantage of online recycling lies in its services in terms of safety and convenience. This is due to the mobility of TPR, which makes it difficult to do home recycling. In addition, after TPR recycles WEEEs, it is difficult for consumers to get in touch with it and to know the condition of WEEEs. This has also led to frequent personal phone privacy leaks in recent years. However, online recycling does not have the above problems due to home recovery, logistics tracking and professional data erasure technology. For example, Loving Recycling entered a partnership with Blancco, the world's top data security company, in 2017 to improve the technical level of permanently erasing information in electronic products. Although the high service level can effectively improve the recovery volume, it will also lead to an exponential increase in the service cost. In addition, online recycler also needs to adopt different service configurations for different kinds of WEEEs. For example, consumers trying to recycle TV sets and mobile phones have different preferences for services.