Waste electronics are piling up around the world, whether they are lost in drawers, cupboards and attics just in case the devices might be useful one day or dispatched to the growing mounds of landfill in Africa and South-East Asia.
The United Nations Global E-Waste Monitor estimated that consumers, governments and companies threw away some 53.6 million tonnes of unwanted electronics in 2019. That represented an increase of 21 per cent over the amount discarded five years earlier. By 2030, the world could easily be dumping 74 million tonnes of e-waste “fuelled mainly by higher consumption rates of electric and electronic equipment, short life cycles and few options for repair”. Out of 2019’s haul, only 17.4 per cent of the waste was collected and recycled in some way.
It is a situation that has been building up for a while, John Shegerian, chairman and CEO of electronics-recycling specialist ERI, noted at the 2021 World Circular Economy Forum (WCEF)....