International E-waste Day is a yearly awareness raising celebration initiated by the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Forum to highlight the growing issue of electronic waste and promote responsible e-waste management.
According to the UN, 8kg of e-waste per person will be produced worldwide in 2023. This means 61.3 million tonnes of electronic waste discarded within a year.
Only 17.4% of this waste, containing a mixture of harmful substances and precious materials, will be recorded as being properly collected, treated and recycled globally. The remaining 50.6 million tonnes will be either placed in landfill, burned or illegally traded and treated in a sub-standard way, or simply hoarded in the households.
Even in Europe, which leads the world in e-waste recycling, only 54% of e-waste is officially reported as collected and recycled, and the lack of public awareness is preventing countries from developing circular economies for electronic equipment.
This year's theme is "you can recycle anything with a plug, battery or cable", highlighting the issue of invisible e-waste. Invisible e-waste is electronic items that often go unrecognised and are not properly recycled within the appropriate waste stream. While e-waste is often associated with discarded gadgets and devices, a significant amount of electronic waste remains hidden in plain sight.
What is invisible e-waste?
Invisible e-waste refers to electronic waste that goes unnoticed due to its nature or appearance, leading consumers to overlook its recyclable potential. As today's lifestyle is more and more technology oriented, a lot of products present on the market have electrical or electronic components.
This means that at the end of their lives, when they can no longer be reused or repaired, they should be part of the electronics' recycling stream.
Some examples of these type of objects, largely present in households are:
Why is invisible e-waste a problem?
According to the study developed in 2022 by UNITAR and WEEE Forum members in six countries (UK, Italy, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, and the Netherlands) of the 74 average total e-products in a household, 13 are being hoarded (nine of them unused but work, and four broken).
Small consumer electronics and accessories, such as headphones and remote controls, which are often not recognised as electronic items, rank top of the list of hoarded products. If these gadgets remain in the drawers and cupboards, the valuable resources they contain cannot re-enter the manufacturing cycle and are lost.
When electronic devices and components are disposed improperly because they were not recognised as e-waste, they often end up in landfills or incinerators. Electronics contain various hazardous substances such as lead, mercury, cadmium, and flame retardants, which can leach into soil and water sources, polluting ecosystems and posing risks to human health.
These devices also contain valuable resources, including precious material like gold, silver, and copper, as well as rare and strategic elements also called Critical Raw Materials which are crucial for the green transition and production of new electronic devices.
When e-waste is not recycled properly, these valuable materials go to waste. Mining and extracting new resources to meet the demand for new electronics production contribute to the depletion of finite resources, and intensify environmental damage.
