In September 2016, Samsung suspended sales of its newly released Galaxy Note7 smartphoneand issued a recall after discovering a manufacturing defect in the phones’ batteries had caused the devices to overheat, resulting in dangerous fires and explosions. This recall resulted in a millions of discontinued, damaged and recalled phones to be placed in recycling bins, creating both an e-waste recycling issue and opportunity.
Shortly after that, Samsung SDI’s Chinese manufacturing facility in Tianjin, China, suffered a fire that was caused by lithium batteries inside the production workshops and some half-finished products, and Greenpeace called out Samsung for failing to produce a recycling plan for the approximately 4.3 million defective and recalled Galaxy Note7 smartphones.
