Staggering e-waste numbers revealed in grim new report

Last year, we “smart” humans threw away 44.7 million metric tonnes of things with a plug or battery – everything from refrigerators and television sets to solar panels and mobile phones. To put that in more visual terms, imagine 1.23 million 18-wheel trucks filled to capacity with e-waste – enough trucks to line up bumper-to-bumper from New York to Bangkok and back. (A metric tonne is equal to around 1.1 US tons, or about 2,204 pounds.)

Given that we generated 8 percent more than we did just two years prior, things aren’t looking very good. And in fact, according to a new UN-backed report, we can expect to see a further 17 percent increase of e-waste, to 52.2 million metric tonnes, by 2021. E-waste is the fastest growing part of the world's domestic waste stream.

The new report, Global E-waste Monitor 2017 is a group effort between the United Nations University (UNU), represented through its Sustainable Cycles (SCYCLE) Programme hosted by UNU's Vice-Rectorate in Europe, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), and the International Solid Waste Association (ISWA). The basic gist is that falling prices have made electronics affordable for most people worldwide; meanwhile, people in wealthier countries are being increasingly lured to buy early equipment replacement or new things altogether.

Here’s how it looks by the numbers:

9: The number of great pyramids that are equal in weight to the amount of e-waste generated last year.

20 percent: The amount of that e-waste that was recycled in 2016.

4 percent: The amount of 2016 e-waste known to have been thrown into landfills.

76 percent: The amount of 2016 e-waste that was incinerated, in landfills, recycled in informal (backyard) operations or remains stored in our households.

$55,000,000,000: The value of gold, silver, copper, other high value recoverable materials that were not recovered.

6.1 kilograms (13.4 pounds): The average amount of e-waste generated globally per person in 2016.

11.6 kilograms (25.5 pounds): The average amount of e-waste generated in the Americas per person in 2016.

17 percent: The amount of e-waste recycled in the Americas in 2016.

3: The number of electrical and electronic equipment categories that account for 75 percent of global e-waste by weight, and also expected to see the most growth:

Small equipment, like vacuum cleaners, microwaves, ventilation equipment, toasters, electric kettles, electric shavers, scales, calculators, radio sets, video cameras, electrical and electronic toys, small electrical and electronic tools, small medical devices, small monitoring and control instruments.Large equipment, like washing machines, clothes dryers, dish-washing machines, electric stoves, large printing machines, copying equipment, photovoltaic panels).Temperature exchange equipment, like refrigerators, freezers, air conditioners, heat pumps.

7.4 billion: The world population.

7.7 billion: The number of mobile-cellular subscriptions.

36 percent: The number of Americans who own a smartphone, a computer, and a tablet.

2 years: The far end of an average smartphone lifecycle in the USA, China, and major EU countries.

1 million tons: The weight of all the chargers for mobile phones, laptops et cetera, produced each year.

If there's a bright side to this dark mess, it's that more countries are adopting e-waste legislation, the report says, noting that 66 percent of the world's people live in the countries that have national e-waste management laws; an increase of 44 percent since 2014.

Also, although we’re making more and more stuff, some of it is getting smaller. Waste for small IT and telecommunication equipment (mobile phones, GPS, pocket calculators, routers, personal computers, printers, telephones, et cetera) is expected to grow less quickly by weight due to miniaturization.

Likewise, little growth is expected for lamps (fluorescent lamps, high intensity discharge lamps, LED lamps). And as heavy CRT screens for televisions, monitors, laptops, notebooks, and tablets are replaced with flat panel displays, e-waste from this category is expected to decline.

Just as Tom Waits sings, “you can never hold back spring,” so too can we not hold back digital progress. But we most certainly can make an effort to better design components used in electrical and electronic equipment, as well as devise better methods for recycling and recovering. All of which this report calls for.

"We live in a time of transition to a more digital world, where automation, sensors and artificial intelligence are transforming all the industries, our daily lives and our societies,” says Antonis Mavropoulos, President, International Solid Waste Association (ISW). “E-waste is the most emblematic by-product of this transition and everything shows that it will continue to grow at unprecedented rates. Finding the proper solutions for e-waste management is a measure of our ability to utilise the technological advances to stimulate a wasteless future and to make circular economy a reality for this complex waste stream that contains valuable resources. But first, we need to be able to measure and collect data and statistics on e-waste, locally and globally, in a uniform way. The Global E-Waste Monitor 2017 represents a significant effort in the right direction."

And of course, on a consumer level we can fight the cause of the problem: We can treat our equipment as if it were precious, not disposable. We can resist the siren song of shiny new things, take care of what we have, repair when we can and donate when we can't ... and when all else fails, recycle responsibly.

RECICLA ECOLOGÍA 69 TONELADAS DE DESPERDICIOS ELECTRÓNICOS

Ciudad Juárez.- La Dirección de Ecología ha logrado reciclar un total de 69 toneladas de residuos electrónicos para evitar que fueran a dar al relleno sanitario y contribuyan a la emisión de gases venenosos, esto lo dio a conocer Jürgen Ganser Carbajal titular de la dependencia.

Informó que las 65 toneladas de aparatos electrónicos fueron acumuladas en los últimos tres meses gracias a la campaña “Juárez Recicla”; mientras el programa “Ponte las Pilas” para el reciclaje de baterías electrónicas ha logrado acumular 4 toneladas.

Explicó que en la campaña Juárez Recicla, personal de la dependencia colocó cuatro centros de acopio con contenedores especiales para la recepción de los residuos, habiendo capacitado al personal responsable sobre el manejo apropiado de estos materiales.

“Cuando una pantalla de televisión o una lámpara se rompe libera un gas dañino para la salud, por eso ofrecimos a los un curso de cuatro horas sobre como reconocer los residuos electrónicos, así como las medidas de control y seguridad en su manejo”, comentó el funcionario.

Los contenedores de Juárez Recicla están ubicados en las estaciones de bomberos número 2 (parque Borunda), número 4 (calles Faraday y Gómez Morín), número 8 (Barranco Azul y Eje Vial Juan Gabriel); y uno más en las oficinas administrativas José María Morelos y Pavón (avenida Lincoln).

Dijo además que la campaña Ponte las Pilas ha recibido muy buena aceptación y participación de la comunidad, quien tomando conciencia del riesgo para el medio ambiente y para la salud contribuyó a reunir 4 mil kilógramos de baterías electrónicas.

Para esto, personal de la Dirección de Ecología colocó un total de 60 contendores para la recepción de baterías en las unidades administrativas “Lic. Benito Juárez” y “José María Morelos y Pavón”, en los campus de la Universidad Autónoma de Ciudad Juárez y en 50 tiendas de auto servicio.

Las 65 toneladas de aparatos fueron entregados a la empresa Ecorecikla, quien se encargó de reciclar y rehusar los componentes químicos de los residuos; mientras que las baterías fueran trasladadas a Nuevo León para su confinamiento según se informó

IISc researchers' ecofriendly way of recycling e-waste

Indian Institute of Science (IISc) researchers have found a novel way to recycle the mounting pile of electronic waste more efficiently and in an environmentally friendly manner. According to the United National Environmental Programme, about 50 million tonnes of e-waste is generated annually across the world.

The new approach is based on the idea of crushing e-waste into nanosize particles using a ball mill at very low temperature ranging from -50 to -150 degree C.

When crushed to nanosize particles for about 30 minutes, different classes of materials - metals, oxides and polymer - that go into the making of electronic items get physically reduced into their constituent phases, which can then be separated without using any chemicals. The use of low-temperature grinding eliminates noxious emission. The results of the study were published in the journal Materials Today.

"The behaviour of individual materials is different when they are pulverised at room temperature. While metal and oxides get mixed, the local temperature of polymer increases during grinding and so the polymer melts instead of breaking," says Dr. Chandra Sekhar Tiwary from Materials Engineering Department at IISc and the first author of the paper. "The polymer starts reacting with the rest of the components and forms a chunk. So we can't separate the individual components."

"The deformation behaviour at low temperature is very different from room temperature. There are two processes that happen when milling. The polymer material breaks but metals get welded, some sort of solid-state welding resulting in mixing; the welded metals again get broken during milling. At low temperature mixing does not happen," says Prof. K. Chattopadhyay from the Materials Engineering Department at IISc and the corresponding author of the paper. There is also a lower limit to which materials can be broken into when e-waste is milled at room temperature. The maximum size reduction that can be achieved is about of 200 nanometre. But in the case of low temperature ball milling the size can be reduced to 20-150 nanometres.

Novel design

The low-temperature ball mill was designed by Dr. Tiwary. The cryo-mill grinding chamber is cooled using liquid nitrogen and a small hardened steel ball is used for grinding the material in a controlled inert atmosphere using argon gas. "The interface remains clean when broken in an inert atmosphere," says Prof. Chattopadhyay.

"One of the main purposes of ball milling [at room temperature] is to mix materials. But in the case of ball milling at low temperature we did not observe any mixing; the individual components separate out really well. We wanted to use this property more constructively. So we took two printed circuit boards from optical mouse and milled them for 30 minutes," recalls Dr. Tiwary.

The polymer becomes brittle when cooled to -120 degree C and ball milling easily breaks it into a fine power. Metals and oxides too get broken but are a bit bigger in size.

The crushed powder was then mixed with water to separate the components into individual classes of materials using gravity. The powder separated into two layers - the polymer floats at the top due to lower density, while metals and oxides of similar size and different density settle at the bottom. The bottom layer when diluted further separated into oxides at the top and metals at the bottom. The oxides and metals were present as individual elements.

"Our low-temperature milling separates the components into single phase components without using any chemicals, which is not possible using other techniques," says Prof. Chattopadhyay. "Our process is scalable and is environment friendly though it uses higher energy."