E-waste are electronic products that are unwanted or not working which users throw away (step-initiative.org, 2022). Only 17.4% of the total E-waste in the world is collected and properly recycled (Statista.com ,2022). in 2019, 53.6 million metric tons E-waste was produced. In 2030 its projected the total E-waste will be 74.7 million metric tons of E-waste (Statista.com, 2022). The international waste electrical and electronic equipment forum (WEEE) stated that in 2022, a total of 5.3 billion mobile phones will be thrown away. As many people throw away their phone instead of recycling them (Gill, 2022). From this one can conclude many people throw away their electrical devices instead of recycling them. People do not seem to understand the value their electronic devices hold in terms of the natural resources although the device itself might be outdated or not working (Gill, 2022). In a world were sustainable production and consumption is priority one due to the negative effects on our climate this is serious problem. E-waste can be toxic and is of course not biodegradable. In addition, there are a lot of valuable natural resources like lithium which is used for batteries in electronic devices. The demand for lithium is increasing exponentially. between 2016 and 2018, the demand for lithium doubled. However, finding lithium is most often very costly and has extreme negative impact on the environment (Katwala, 2018). So by electrifying our world and using clean energy like for example solar power we need more batteries. However, since we do not sufficiently recycle our electronic products a lot of lithium is wasted which on its turn has extreme negative impact on the environment by both the pollution of the planet but also the extra lithium that needs to be found. That is why it is important people start recycling there own electrical products because if we don’t the transition from fossil fuels to clean energy sources will have almost no effect since we are polluting our planet in a different way. Luckily there are some initiatives that moves people in the right direction for example, when buying a new product from Apple you can immediately give your old device back and get a discount on the product you are buying.
I hope that you by reading this blog realise the importance of recycling your electronic devices and I hope you will start recycling yourself and urge others to do so as well before the electrification and all the investments made for clean energy might be all for nothing.
references:
Gill, V. (2022). E-waste: Five billion phones to be thrown away in 2022. Retrieved 14 October 2022, from https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-63245150
Katwala, A. (2022). The spiralling environmental cost of our lithium battery addiction. Retrieved 14 October 2022, from https://www.wired.co.uk/article/lithium-batteries-environment-impact
Topic: Electronic waste worldwide. (2022). Retrieved 14 October 2022, from https://www.statista.com/topics/3409/electronic-waste-worldwide/#topicHeader__wrapper
step-initiative.org (2022). Retrieved 14 October 2022, from https://www.step-initiative.org/e-waste-challenge.html
