Dr Ruediger Kuehr discusses the current state of global e-waste and the considerations that need to be made to achieve circularity.
The topic of electronic waste, or e-waste, has been a prominent point of contemporary tech discussions, and for good reason. E-waste is steadily becoming one of the more rotten sides of the tech’s societal impact, with practices such as ‘fast tech’ adding to the ever-worsening state of Earth’s environmental troubles.
In March, the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) released a report on the state of global e-waste, highlighting a number of troubling realities of humanity’s relationship with electronics. For example, the report states that the world’s generation of e-waste is rising five times faster than documented e-waste recycling efforts.
To find out more about the state of global e-waste, we spoke to one of the report’s lead authors, Dr Ruediger Kuehr, who is an adjunct professor with the Department for Electronic and Computer Engineering at University of Limerick.
Cause and collection
According the report, titled Global E-waste Monitor 2024, 62m metric tonnes of e-waste was produced in 2022, an increase of 82pc compared to 2010. The report predicts that this will rise another 32pc to 82m by 2030. Kuehr pointed out that this figure does not account for electronic devices such as electric vehicles and their batteries, as they are managed separately under specific legislation.
But what’s driving this rapid increase in e-waste? Kuehr, who also serves as a senior manager and diplomat at UNITAR, pointed to tech’s increasing presence in our daily lives and our increasing reliance on electronics.
“Electronics are embedded in our daily lives, from checking our bank balance through online banking on our mobile phones, to medical monitoring on wearable devices, to smart lighting systems at home and so on,” he said. “With an increasing reliance on electronic devices across our daily routines, the demand for cheap gadgets will also further rise.”
Despite the massive amount of e-waste generated in 2022, the rate of proper collection and recycling of this waste was nowhere near sufficient, amounting to less than a quarter at 22.3pc, which is “especially alarming” according to Kuehr.
“The incentives to collect and recycle electronics are increasingly being outpaced by the continued growth in the volume of electronics entering the market. And this outpacing over time has now reached five times,” he said. As a result, the report predicts a drop in documented collection and recycling to just 20pc by 2030. “These developments are putting the world at severe risk.”
Critical materials
Kuehr also noted how the lack of infrastructure for collecting and treating e-waste has led to “suboptimal procedures”, such as crude methods of extracting valuable materials like gold, iron and copper from the waste. According to the report, the estimated value of metals embedded in e-waste produced in 2022 amounted to $91bn.
Kuehr said that in some economically disadvantaged areas, people are burning e-waste, disassembling machines with stones and using acid baths to get access to these valuable metals, at great cost to their personal health (and the environment) as they are exposed to emissions from brominated flame retardants, mercury or lead, “all of which are highly toxic”.
As well as valuable metals, Kuehr noted that many critical raw materials in e-waste are permanently lost. “Many functions of our latest gadgets highly depend on critical raw materials, including rare earth elements, which cannot be easily substituted,” he said. Both Kuehr and the report stated that only 1pc of the rare earth material in e-waste is recycled.
The reason for this, said Kuehr, is related to the associated costs rather than the recycling technology.
“It is still cheaper today to purchase rare earth elements on the global market as virgin material than regaining them from urban mines, such as e-waste mountain collections,” he said. “But retrieving most of the raw materials and elements from the urban mine would also reduce carbon dioxide emissions through mining in the Earth’s crust.”
Policies and legislation
The key to curbing the “e-waste avalanche”, said Kuehr, lies in the establishment of proper policies and legislation. According to the report, out of 81 countries that have e-waste legislation, only 36 have set clear recycling targets.
Kuehr suggested a number of ways that policies can be improved, including increased repair and refurbishment initiatives.
“Large consumer groups such as government organisations, businesses and banks can set a new tone. They should no longer procure the products but only purchase the service the product provides,” he suggested. “In this model, ownership stays with the service provider or producer, who also retrieves the electronic products when new ones enter the market, enhancing service quality.
“Consequently, most materials should be collected and recycled by the original producer, preventing losses due to disposal in household bins, informal treatment, or transboundary shipments, while promoting increased component reuse.”
This practice of “dematerialisation” can have a positive effect according to Kuehr, as the individual consumer is provided with more ownership to the establishment of circularity.
He noted that recent tech advancements such as cloud computing, AI and green energy systems are progressing towards sustainability, but warned against ignoring the lifespan considerations of these technologies. “We must finally stop marketing the latest developments without holistically considering their end-of-life aspects. This is the linear approach, which is no longer timely.”
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