Up to 500 thousand tobacco heaters recycled by 2024 and an average recovery of 80% of raw materials.
This is the objective of "REC - Recycling for circular economy", an initiative presented this morning at the headquarters of the Civita association by Philip Morris Italia: a recycling project dedicated to IQOS devices, the heated tobacco product with over 2 million users, and the tobacco heater Lil.
The raw materials present in the devices, including plastic and metal materials, magnets, lithium ion batteries and circuits, are recovered and recycled.
They are considered "critical" by the EU, i.e. at high supply risk and of strategic economic importance for numerous industrial activities.
"This project is part of our sustainability strategy to promote a circular economy. Over time, recycling millions of devices in Italy will allow us to add another fundamental piece to our integrated supply chain, developed in recent years around innovative products without combustion. A supply chain that between agricultural, manufacturing and consumer services already involve over 40 thousand people", said the president and CEO of Philip Morris Italy and president of South-Western Europe of Philip Morris International, Marco Hannappel.
In this first phase, the project involves IQOS eLil devices returned by consumers as part of Philip Morris' warranty and commercial initiatives.
If they are no longer usable, they are delivered by a logistics partner company to a company specialized in the treatment of Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) which takes care of raw material separation operations and recovery activities.
For the Minister of the Environment and Energy Security Gilberto Pichetto Fratin, Philip Morris is "a model to be copied: a large company that addresses the problem of the end-of-life of its products and is committed to finding a path.
For the country it also means the possibility of having secondary raw materials, rare minerals, of which Italy has enormous quantities. Therefore also a contribution to the new national economy".
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