E-waste Estimated to Reach 82 Million Tons in 2030

In 2022, 62 million tons of e-waste were disregarded globally. With a 2.6 million tonnes increase a year, it is projected that it could reach 82 million tons by 2030. At the same time, the recycling rate is expected to drop from 22.3% to 20%.

When I teach or give a talk on emerging technologies, I often find a huge gap in the understanding of the full production chain of hardware and software. It is as if the smartphone is just magically in our hands, solving all our problems and making the world a better place; the AI prompts magically make lives so much easier, speeding up our tasks, admin, and thought processes.

In one course I taught, I encountered a specifically environmentally aware group; they had backed away from anything fast fashion, using mainly secondhand clothing, none of them owned a car, most of them didn’t have a social media account, and several refused to travel by airplane. Yet, when we spoke about emerging technology, it seemed to them as if there was no problem at all: they all had the latest tech.

There is a big blind spot in understanding what our tech is built of and its dependencies. What it takes to get the minerals out of the ground, what the environmental and social impact of such extraction is, and to understand what happens when we disregard our tech.

The 85%+ of e-waste that isn’t recycled mainly ends up in landfills. E-waste is toxic - it is not biodegradable and accumulates in the soil, air, water, and living things.

Download the UNITAR report:
https://www.unitar.org/about/news-stories/press/global-e-waste-monitor-2024-electronic-waste-rising-five-times-faster-documented-e-waste-recycling

Starter pack on dependencies behind AI:
Kate Crawford’s book “Atlas of AI” and the essay and visualisation “Atanomy of AI” by Kate Crawford and Vladan Joler on: https://anatomyof.ai

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This text was first published as a LinkedIn post on March 25, 2024.