According to the United Nations, 50 million tons of e-waste are generated every year. This is composed of old equipment or electronic products that have been damaged or stopped working. Although there is so much waste accumulation every year - there are a large number of available precious metals for recycling, the mining of these metals continues to drive the reduction of available resources. As pointed out by the United Nations, as much as 7% of the world's gold may be stored in these growing e-waste.
Data map
In addition, less than 20% of e-waste is recycled, which makes it difficult to make better use of precious metals instead of being trapped in garbage. The loss of this precious metal is just another impact of e-waste - it will also have an impact on environmental pollution and human health. Since there are few formal e-waste recycling projects, especially in third world countries, informal recycling will occur. However, as explained by the Census Bureau, this has been found to have many adverse effects on health.
The problem of electronic waste
With the problem of e-waste, there are many negative effects. As mentioned above, these discarded electronic products are the owners of tons of precious metals, which may be exhausted in the next century if no change is made. According to the current situation of the United Nations, the world will produce more than 200 million tons of electronic waste in 2050. As less and less precious metals are found on earth, there is no need to continue mining e-waste when it contains so many precious metals.
Another problem caused by growing e-waste is health. Developing countries face the greatest risk. It is reported that many of them have to deal with e-waste in developed countries. In India, for example, 70% of the e-waste processed in the country is not domestic. Many of the risks involved in the informal method of recycling toxic substances come from the electronic waste.
Why do you need a better recycling plan
When valuable metals such as gallium, silver and indium are buried in e-waste, there are also problems in the supply chain of these metals. According to the BBC, organizations such as the Royal Society of chemistry are calling on humans to mine precious metals in e-waste instead of continuing to mine them from the earth. With the continuous production of new electronic products, these metals need to be recycled rather than occupying depleted resources.
In fact, there are many ways to revolutionize the current system and make it more sustainable. As the United Nations says, there are a variety of solutions, from designing products to make them more durable to repurchase initiatives and "urban mining" and extracting metals from existing garbage dumps. This, together with the implementation of safe recycling programs to reduce the health risks of informal recycling, can make future electronic equipment manufacturing a sustainable way.