This year’s worldwide mountain of electronic and electrical equipment waste, according to the Waste and Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Forum, will total an estimated 57.4 million tons – greater than the weight of the Great Wall of China, Earth’s heaviest artificial object. Last year’s Global E-waste Monitor 2020 reported that an estimated 53.6 million metric tons of WEEE was generated in 2019. That represented a 21 percent jump in the five years since 2014 with e-waste on a predicted course to 74 million metric tons by 2030.
In the U.S., while many mobile phones are recycled, an estimated 151 million or more phones a year, approximately 416,000 a day, the WEEE reports, are trashed and end up incinerated or landfilled. Some 40 percent of heavy metals in U.S. landfills come from discarded electronics, according to the WEEE.
According to estimates in Europe, where the Forum said the studies are more in depth, 11 of 72 electronic items in an average household are no longer in use or are broken. Annually per citizen, another 9 to 11 pounds of unused electrical and electronic products are hoarded in Europe prior to being discarded. A French study estimates that 54 to 113 million cell phones alone, weighing 10 to 20 tons, are sleeping in drawers and other storage spaces in French homes.
Says Pascal Leroy, Director General of the WEEE Forum, the organization behind International E-Waste Day: “Many factors play a role in making the electrical and electronics sector resource efficient and circular. For example, our member producer responsibility organizations collected and secured responsible recycling of 2.8 Mt of e-waste in 2020. But one thing stands out: as long as citizens don’t return their used, broken gear, sell it, or donate it, we will need to continue mining all-new materials causing great environmental damage.”
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