From old iPhones to discarded vapes, a shocking new report warns that our old tech is creating unmanageable amounts of e-waste.
The UN report reveals that, in 2022, the world created 62 million tonnes of e-waste – the equivalent weight of 6,000 Eiffel Towers.
Worryingly, the world’s waste is increasing by 2.6 million tonnes each year and could hit as much as 82 million tonnes by 2030.
What’s more, less than a quarter of that waste is recycled – despite containing billions of dollars of gold and rare minerals.
Kees Baldé, lead author of the report, said: ‘No more than 1% of demand for essential rare earth elements is met by e-waste recycling. Simply put: Business as usual can’t continue.’
A shocking report reveals that the world generated 62 million tonnes of e-waste in 2022 including thousands of tonnes of abandoned solar panels. This image shows piles of waste awaiting recycling at a centre in Germany
A third of the 62 million tonnes of e-waste generated in 2022 was classed as ‘small devices’, which includes everything from toys to microwaves
A third of the 62 million tonnes of e-waste generated in 2022 was classed as ‘small devices’, which includes everything from toys to microwaves.
A further 4.6 million tonnes comes from what the report calls ‘small IT and telecommunications equipment’.
This includes some of the most commonly used devices such as laptops, mobile phones, GPS devices, and routers.
In the future, the researchers suggest that solar panels could become one of the bigger contributors to e-waste.
In 2022 only 600,000 tonnes of solar panels ended up as e-waste, but by 2030 this could grow to 2.4 million tonnes.
Nikhil Seth, executive director for UNITAR (United Nations Institute for Training and Research), said: ‘Amidst the hopeful embrace of solar panels and electronic equipment to combat the climate crisis and drive digital progress, the emergence in e-waste requires urgent attention.’
European countries are the biggest producers of e-waste per capita, creating 17.6kg per person each year on average.
This is followed by Oceania at 16.3kg per person, the Americas at 14.1kg, and Asia at 6.4kg per person.
Europe and Oceania produce the most e-waste per person. However, they also have the most developed recycling infrastructure and so less of this ends up in landfill
Mobile phones and other telecommunications devices made up 4.6 million tonnes of the world’s e-waste. This image shows phones that have been collected for informal recycling in Ghana
However, it is not just how much waste is generated that is important, but how much of it is properly recycled.
Overall, only 22.3 per cent of the world’s e-waste was documented as being properly recycled in 2022.
Although European countries produce the most e-waste per capita, they also recycle the highest proportion of that waste.
European countries recycled 7.53kg of e-waste per person while countries in the Americas only recycled 4.2kg per person.
In Africa, meanwhile, less than one per cent of e-waste is formally documented as being recycled.
The researchers estimate that 16 million tonnes of e-waste is managed in a vast informal recycling system.
However, these informal systems also pose a huge risk to the health of the workers and the local environment.
The report warns that pieces of e-waste with a plug or a battery should be considered an environmental hazard.
These contain toxic chemicals such as mercury which can lead to irreversible brain damage for those exposed to it.
E-waste like these discarded laptops at a German recycling centre contained an estimated £90 billion (£71 billion) worth of metals in 2022
As this graph shows, e-waste generation (in black) will continue to outstrip recycling capacity (in green) into the future
Yet, even with the assistance of informal recycling, the researchers predict that the proportion of e-waste being recycled each year will actually fall in the future.
By 2023, the researchers suggest that only 20 per cent of e-waste will be recycled as the growth in waste continues to outstrip the world’s recycling efforts.
Cosmas Luckyson Zavazana, director of the ITU Telecommunication Development Bureau, said: ‘The latest research shows that the global challenge posed by e-waste is only going to grow.
‘With less than half of the world implementing and enforcing approaches to manage the problem, this raises the alarm for sound regulations to increase collection and recycling.’
E-waste is contributing to a growing ecological problem as it pollutes the environment. Here, at a now-demolished scrapyard in Ghana, you can see the devastation of what were once thriving wetlands
This graph shows the economic value of the different minerals found in e-waste in 2022. Copper, Iron, and Gold were the most valuable minerals that could have been saved through recycling
As e-waste grows faster than our recycling capacity, this not only creates an environmental hazard in itself but also wastes billions of dollars worth of minerals.
The total e-waste produced in 2022 contained more than $90 billion (£71 billion) worth of metals including $19 billion (£15bn) in copper, $15 billion (£12bn) in gold, and $16 billion (£12.6bn) in iron.
The UN report estimates that $62 billion (£49 billion) worth of recoverable natural resources was lost in 2022 alone.
If countries could bring their e-waste collection and recycling rates up to just 60 per cent by 2030, the experts say benefits would exceed the costs by $38 billion (£30bn).
However, the researchers write that these efforts are being held back by limited repair options, shorter product life cycles, and poor management infrastructure.
