recycle

The lack of conversation around the environment, climate change, and our energy economy during the 2012 election season, while widely noted, still seemed to attract little attention. Certainly health, financial and national security issues were more immediate concern for many voters. Yet, the lack of initiative at the federal level has not kept technical innovators, astute business people and local governments from moving forward with new ideas for addressing our environmental and energy concerns.

A worldwide epidemic of counterfeit electronic components is flooding the market and affects the supply chains of all industries. It is estimated that the financial loss due to counterfeit components is over $10 billion per year. Counterfeiting itself becomes profitable when scrapped components, components from recycled products or inexpensive components can be “remarked” and sold as a new, more expensive, higher reliability version. Much of the effort today has not been placed on preventing counterfeiting but rather screening components to identify and remove counterfeits before they are used in a finished product.