Title: What Can We Do About the Growing E-waste Problem?
Headings: What Can We Do About the Growing E-waste Problem?
General Earth Institute
What Can We Do About the Growing E-waste Problem?
Why the upsurge in e-waste?
What’s in e-waste?
The state of e-waste recycling
What U.S. laws govern e-waste?
A problem requiring multiple solutions
Designing better products
The right to repair
Extended Producer Responsibility
More convenient recycling
Better recycling
The goal of a circular economy
What you can do about e-waste
Resources
60 Minutes: The Wasteland (e-waste in China)
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Content: Electronic devices are made of a complex mix of materials that include gold, silver, copper, platinum, palladium, lithium, cobalt and other valuable elements. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) says, “One metric ton of circuit boards can contain 40 to 800 times the amount of gold and 30 to 40 times the amount of copper mined from one metric ton of ore in the United States.” These precious materials can be reclaimed through recycling. Inside a phone. Photo: Andrew Magill
But electronic devices also comprise toxic heavy metals like lead, mercury, cadmium and beryllium, polluting PVC plastic, and hazardous chemicals, such as brominated flame retardants, which can harm human health and the environment. In 2016, the estimated value of recoverable materials in global e-waste was $64.6 billion, but only 20 percent of it was properly recycled to enable recovery of the valuable materials. Much of the rest is dumped in landfills where toxic chemicals can leach from the e-waste and end up contaminating the water supply. As more people buy electronic equipment, manufacturers are beginning to face shortages of the raw materials needed to make their products, so reclaiming and reusing the materials from discarded products and waste—a process called urban mining—makes economic and environmental sense. A recent study in China found that mining copper, gold and aluminum from ore costs 13 times more than recovering the metals through the urban mining of e-waste.