Tech UPTechnologyElectronic waste accumulated in 2021 weighs more than the...

Electronic waste accumulated in 2021 weighs more than the Great Wall of China

On International Electronic Waste Day, the WEEE Forum, a multinational center dedicated to the management of electrical and electronic equipment waste, offers data that speaks for itself: this year, the global mountain of waste electrical and electronic equipment ( WEEE) will be about 57.4 million tons, which is a mass greater than that of the heaviest artificial object on Earth: the Great Wall of China.

Last year’s Global E-Waste Monitor 2020 reported an estimated 53.6 million metric tons (Mt) of WEEE generated in 2019, an increase of 21% over the last five years and with an amount forecast for 2030 of 74 Mt.

Increase in consumption and reduction of useful life

Therefore, the global generation of e-waste is growing annually by 2 Mt, or around 3 to 4%, a problem attributed to higher consumption rates of electronic products (increasing 3% annually), product life cycles more short and limited repair options.

In Europe, 11 of the 72 electronic items that exist in the average household are no longer used or damaged. In addition, each citizen would accumulate annually from 4 to 5 kilos of devices that he does not use.

In the US, while many cell phones are recycled, it is estimated that at least 151 million phones a year (roughly 416,000 a day) are thrown away and end up incinerated or in landfills, with 40% of heavy metals in US landfills come from e-waste.

According to these experts, there is a need for homes, businesses and governments to support efforts to bring more dead or unused battery-powered or plug-in products to facilities where they can be repaired or recycled. In this way, its most valuable components could also be recovered to reduce the need to extract new resources.

“Embedded in 1 million cell phones, for example, are 24 kg of gold, 16,000 kg of copper, 350 kg of silver and 14 kg of palladium, resources that could be recovered and returned to the production cycle. And if we don’t recycle these materials, we have to extract new supplies, which damages the environment. In addition, recovering gold and other materials from waste saves a lot of carbon dioxide emissions compared to mining virgin metals, ”explains Kees Baldé, Senior Program Officer for the SCYCLE program at the United Nations University. .

The rapid development of mobile phones has made the market dependent on the rapid replacement of older devices. Mobile devices affect the environment in many ways throughout their life, but the impact can be reduced and spread over a longer period by applying circular economy principles, including production control, device reuse, remanufacturing and recycling, and improved circular design involving component material selection. standardization and modularization to facilitate disassembly. “

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