Icotera’s ESG Manager explains circularity in FTTH products and the value of refurbishment and e-waste handling. She advises ISPs to ask three key questions to their suppliers to raise circularity and save CO2 and money.
By Freja Ludvigsen, ESG Manager, Icotera
As a member of the FTTH Sustainability Committee, I had the pleasure of speaking about circularity in FTTH products at the FTTH Conference 2025 in Amsterdam together with Sustainability Officer Olivier van Duuren from Genexis, and Sustainability Project Lead Valeria Nunez Alfaro from Corning. The circularity agenda was a part of the workshop “How green is the FTTH sector and how are we improving?” and together, we argued that the FTTH sector must embrace circular economy principles at every stage of a product’s lifecycle. Manufacturing it-hardware involves using the world’s stock of natural capitals, and electronic waste is one of the fastest growing waste streams in the world, according to Global E-waste monitor 2024.
In 2022, Europe was the region that generated the most e-waste (17.6 kg per capita), with only 42.8 per cent recycled.
Electronics contain valuable critical raw minerals like copper, lithium, and platinum, and precious metals like gold and silver that will be scarce in the near future if not preserved. This is a material sustainability industry risk to be addressed.
Reuse, repair, refurbish, recycle
The circular economy is, according to the European Parliament, a model of production and consumption which involves sharing, leasing, reusing, repairing, refurbishing and recycling existing materials and products as long as possible.
When a product reaches the end of its life, its materials are kept within the economy wherever possible thanks to recycling. These can be productively used again and again, thereby creating further value.
The opposite is the linear economy, based on producing, using, and disposing without encountering the input and output effects on the environment.
Making circular economy an easy choice
At Icotera, we are committed to designing and delivering next generation fibre and high-quality Wi-Fi solutions, setting the standard for circularity in the FTTH industry.
We are pioneering practical solutions that make circularity an easy and cost-effective choice for our customers. At the FTTH 2025 conference, I shared how choosing an Icotera router and refurbishment service can help ISPs save money, CO2, and critical raw minerals without compromising performance.
The product lifecycle
Take, for example, the lifecycle of an Icotera Wi-Fi 6 router.
Icotera is the first in the market with third-party verified Environmental Product Declarations (EPD). The i48xx Wi-Fi 6 series (i4862, i4882, and i4883) will soon come with an EPD, a document that transparently reports the environmental impact of a product, based on a product lifecycle assessment (LCA). An EPD makes it easy for customers to select the most sustainable option in the market without compromising on performance, but it also gives new environmental data in the full lifecycle.
A router is a mine of resources
The Icotera Wi-Fi 6 router is manufactured from approximately 300 carefully chosen, high-quality electronic components designed for five years product lifetime. LCA data behind the EPD shows they the components contain 21 critical raw materials and 2 precious metals.
This top 10 list, based on our product LCA analysis, reveals that a router is a mine of resources!
One unit contains 121 grams of copper, 305 mg of silver, and 41 mg of gold - and much more. Add to that the 240 grams of aluminium from the heat sink!
That’s why it makes sense to keep the unit alive as long as possible and make sure that the unit is handled responsibly as e-waste at the end-of-life to bring back the materials into the loop.
As the ESG manager in Icotera, I shared two ways of making circular an easy choice:
1) Refurbishment service.
2) End-of-life handling.
Refurbishment service
Built of long-lasting components for a minimum of 5 years expected lifetime, an Icotera router often reaches end-of-use long before end-of-life, depending on the ISP’s churn-rate.
Icotera stands out by offering an in-house refurbishment service. Our warehouse in Poland receives batches of used routers from ISPs and takes them through a careful procedure of visual inspection, technical tests, firmware upgrade, cleaning, repackaging, and reporting before returning to the ISP. Now, the router is ready for a new life, and the ISP has prolonged the router's lifetime.
To help our customers assess the impact, we have developed a Refurbishment Calculator. In a simulation scenario, we can showcase to customers how to reduce total costs of ownership and cut CO2 emissions in Scope 3.1 by 20-30%, depending on the deployment plan.
The reduced CO2 comes from prolonging the product's lifetime instead of buying a new unit.
End-of-life handling
For the 8-10% of routers that fail the Icotera refurbishment service due to visual inspection or technical tests, Icotera is actively developing sustainable end-of-life solutions.
Collaborating with students from the Danish Technical University (DTU), we have designed a disassembly process that sorts materials into four fractions within minutes:
- 360g of plastics and 240g of aluminium can be reintroduced into direct material flows.
- 100g of PCB and 180g of PSU can be processed to recover the 21 critical raw materials and 2 precious metals, including the 41 mg of gold!
Recirculating these fractions back into the loop might not generate significant economic revenue yet, as the market for recycled materials is still immature. However, it contributes valuable ESG actions and data to customers in line with ESG criteria E5: Resources and Circular Economy.
Three Key Questions to Ask Your Suppliers
To drive the FTTH industry towards a more circular economy, I encourage ISPs and procurement teams to challenge their suppliers with these essential questions on output circularity:
- Can the product be repaired or refurbished, and how much does it prolong the product’s lifetime?
- Can it be disassembled at end-of-life to recover critical raw materials and precious metals?
- Can the ESG impact be documented in terms of avoided CO2 emissions and resource recovery?
By addressing these considerations, ISPs can optimise their operations, enhance ESG performance, and reduce expenses simultaneously.
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Join Us: Customer ESG Workshop
At Icotera, we are dedicated to making circularity a seamless and scalable solution for the FTTH industry. To learn more, we invite you to our ESG customer workshop at the Icotera Warehouse and Refurbishment Centre on 17th September in Szczecin, Poland, where we will share insights and best practices on ESG, refurbishment and e-waste handling.
Read more and sign up for the workshop here
