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I N T R O D U C T I O N
The E-Waste Column is an educational initiative and impact ecosystem of the social enterprise, Palsa & Pulk. It was founded by Christine Nikander in September 2022 with the aim to close knowledge gaps, connect stakeholders, and create action around e-waste and electronics circularity.
The E-Waste Column originally started out as a weekly column, and other publications and resources were later added to the mix. Over time, The E-Waste Column grew into an EdTech, innovation, and news platform. Today, it serves different stakeholders across three interconnected hubs: learning, innovation, and action. As a multi-stakeholder platform, The E-Waste Column now acts as a type of "circular transition broker".
Since being established, The E-Waste Column has helped thousands of users to understand the social and environmental impacts of electronic devices throughout their whole lifecycle (not just for one phase or step along the way) and their entire global supply chains (not just at one facility or location).
In recognition of the impact The E-Waste Column has had, it was featured in The Bloom's 30 Under 30 Social Impact list in December 2024 and invited to join UNIDO's Global Electronics Management Programme as a stakeholder in October 2025.
Learning Hub
We strive to be the easiest place to understand electronics lifecycles and supply chains.
Our learning hub currently offers text-based learning through 140+ short-format modules, and it will soon also offer easily accessible oral education through our upcoming podcast.
The modular structure in our course content allows you to pick and choose the exact topics you are looking to understand, so you can start and end with what is most relevant to you.
Innovation Hub
We build infrastructure to foster innovation across the raw materials, electronics, and e-waste sectors.
Our innovation hub helps in finding partners, expert resources, networking events, and funding. It allows you to connect directly with others in our network through hub groups and to find relevant opportunities through our matchmaking tool.
The goal of our innovation hub is to better align stakeholders, infrastructure, funding and timelines, regulation and incentives, behavior and implementation pathways, as well as procurement and logistics across the entire value chains or value networks for raw materials, electronics, and e-waste.
Action Hub
We create measurable behavior change around e-waste and electronics circularity.
Our action hub contains different resources to help you take practical action on e-waste and electronics circularity — including best practices, impact guidance, and compliance aids.
Our Circular Actions tool shows you a bunch of practical ways to embed circularity into the life of your electronics, and makes it easier to take tangible actions to combat e-waste.
We are driven by impact and rooted by our experiences.
There is a planetary and human impact to raw materials, electronics, and e-waste. Mitigating and eliminating the adverse impacts of these sectors is what drives us in our work at The E-Waste Column.
We do not want to live in a world where children are subjected to child labour in mines, just so we can scroll endlessly on our phones. We do not want to live in a world where workers get sick working on e-waste dumpsites, just so we can have access to infinitely many new electronic devices. We also do not want to live in a world where ecosystems are destroyed, just to source the materials needed to meet our ever-growing energy demands.
We want to have electronics that are free of forced labour and inhumane working conditions — from their production to their disassembly. We also want to live in a world where electronics are not a key driver for climate change or air, water, and soil pollution — but where they act as an enabler and driver of the just energy transition.
While we realize that may sound like a distant fantasy or far-fetched storytale, we believe that progress is possible. We know from experience that small things add up over time — and that by trying again and again together, we can create meaningful and long-lasting change. Our mission with The E-Waste Column is therefore not built on air castles, but it is rooted in our experiences from the field over the past decade. We have seen firsthand what is possible when people, ideas, and the necessary infrastructure come together and that is something we want to support and drive forward, until that better world we have so long dreamt of and worked towards becomes a lived reality.
About our founder
Christine Nikander has been doing scholarly research into the legal and policy framework surrounding e-waste and conflict minerals since 2015. In The E-Waste Column, she draws upon this expertise and writes about recent developments in law, policy, and business.
Christine studied law at the universities of Columbia (New York), Edinburgh (Scotland), and Leiden (the Netherlands). She enjoys working at the nexus of law, business, sustainability, and social impact. In 2022, she therefore founded the environmental and social sustainability consultancy, Palsa & Pulk.
Read about each of the contributors to the different resources of The E-Waste Column here.
