A ‘Tsunami Of E-Waste’ Is Rolling Out Around The World, And Countries Like India Will Be Hardest Hit

E-waste, the discarded electronics and gadgets, which become obsolete over time due to the advancements in technology has been an ever growing concern for the past few decades.

With technology getting better and better by each passing day, the pace in which an electronic gadget is getting outdated is also speeding up. Just a few years ago a laptop/desktop or mobile phones had an average lifespan of 8-10 years. But with the better hardware and software hitting the market every few days they become outdated in just 2-3 years.

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The desire to upgrade leaves us with one big challenge - what to do with the old ones. As of 2019, we are at a stage where e-waste is the fastest-growing waste stream in the world. And according to the United Nations Environment Programme the worst is yet to come.?

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The World Economic Forum's recent report titled, 'A New Circular Vision for Electronics - Time for a Global Reboot,' a “tsunami” of e-waste is rolling out over the world. UNEP executive director Achim Steiner said the “tsunami of e-waste rolling out over the world” accounts for a large portion of the world’s non-recyclable “waste mountain” and needs to be dealt with immediately.?

“Never mind that it is also an economic stupidity because we are throwing away an enormous amount of raw materials that are essentially reusable,” Steiner said.

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According to the report in 2018 alone 48.5 million tons of e-waste generated globally. 50 million tons of e-waste roughly represents the equivalent of 125,000 jumbo jets, which is more than all the commercial aircraft that have ever been created.??

At this rate, 120 million tons of e-waste will be generated each year by 2050.

What is even more worrisome is what happens with the e-waste that is generated. The report states that only 20 percent of the e-waste is formally recycled. The remaining 80 percent ends up in landfills, gradually polluting the land and water around it.

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Even in the case of the e-waste which goes for recycling, there is no effective ways to completely extract the metals like gold, platinum, cobalt, rare earths, and high quantities of aluminium and tin.

This is because, even today majority of the extraction is done by hand, in countries like India where people use little to no protection when dealing with toxic chemicals and metals.

"The improper handling of e-waste is resulting in a significant loss of scarce and valuable raw materials, including such precious metals as neodymium (vital for magnets in motors), indium (used in flat panel TVs) and cobalt (for batteries). Almost no rare earth minerals are extracted from informal recycling; these are polluting to mine," the report said.

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Stressing on the importance of recycling the study noted that metals in e-waste are difficult to extract; for example, total recovery rates for cobalt are only 30% (despite technology existing that could recycle 95%). The metal is, however, in great demand for laptop, smartphone and electric car batteries. Recycled metals are also two to 10 times more energy efficient than metals smelted from virgin ore. Furthermore, mining discarded electronics produces 80% less emissions of carbon dioxide per unit of gold compared with mining it from the ground.

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"In the short-term, electronic waste remains a largely unused, yet growing, valuable resource. Nearly all of it could be recycled. Urban mining, where resources are extracted from complex waste streams, can now be more economically viable than extracting metal ores from the ground. It is largely less energy intensive. E-waste can be toxic, is not biodegradable and accumulates in the environment, in the soil, air, water and living things. It can also have an adverse impact on health. Children and women are particularly vulnerable to the health risks of improper e-waste management," the report added.

Australia, China, the EU, Japan, North America and the Republic of Korea produce most of the world’s e-waste. In the United States and Canada, every person produces roughly 20kg of e-waste annually, while in the EU the figure stands at 17.7kg. But a large portion of this ends up legally or illegally in South East Asia and African countries.