Experts Are Urging Businesses To Do Their Duty Of Care By Ending Hoarding E-waste
A report produced by WHO last year shows that e-waste numbers have been growing over the years, which isn’t good for our environment and the health of millions of children, adolescents, and expectant mothers.
Now environmental experts are calling for an end to hoarding and proper recycling of electronic waste, which in 2019 stood at 53.6 million tons and was projected to increase by 21% over the next five years.
These experts are advocating employing the services of office waste removal companies that can aid the recycling process. Most individuals don’t realize that when you throw away e-waste in the garbage, you dispose of valuable raw materials. Additionally, you are endangering its sustainability by polluting the sea, land, and air.
E-waste Contains Precious Metals
For example, in the UK, a study by Material Focus, a British non-profit, found that nearly 3 million citizens were expected to send at least 2.7 million older, unwanted electrical devices such as laptops, headphones, smartphones, and speakers to landfills in 2021. And another 2 million individuals were likely to hoard some 2.2 million unused electrical items at home.
Despite the staggering statistics, less than 20% of e-waste is properly collected and recycled. These electronics are made using precious materials such as copper, silver, and gold. In 2019 alone, gold, silver, copper, platinum, and other high-value recoverable materials valued at over $57 billion were dumped or burned instead of being collected for treatment and reuse.
Every year, the United Kingdom generates over 1.590 million tons of e-waste. It is among the leading polluters of the environment with electronic waste, which contains recyclable and reusable raw materials such as copper, zinc, platinum, lithium, and even silver and gold.
On top of recycling e-waste for valuable materials, some items, such as computers, contain memory chips that need to be collected in special conditions and destroyed since if they fall into criminals’ hands, there could be serious abuses.
Since materials like lead and copper are significant environmental pollutants when released, recycling is also important. And lithium batteries, which are common in most electronic devices, explode like bombs if they come into contact with air. Additionally, some of these devices and batteries have sodium, an important substance expected to replace lithium in the future.
UK E-waste Numbers
In the study by Material Focus, British residents throw away over 573,000 kilometers of Christmas lights every four years. To put this into perspective, that is enough to take you to the moon and halfway back.
Another report by the Environment Audit Committee released last November found that about 40% of e-waste, or about 209,000 tons, is illegally exported overseas every year. About 155,000 tons are sent to domestic landfills or incineration sites. Compared to the rest of the world, the UK produces about 23.9 kilograms of e-waste per person, which is only second to Norway. This exceeds the world average of 7.3 kilograms per capita and the European average of 16.2 kg.
The Material Focus study was geared toward promoting an electronics reuse campaign. The goal was to encourage consumers to donate their unwanted electronic devices to charity or recycle them.
According to Scott Butler, the executive director of the non-profit, the campaign was designed to inspire people to “do something useful” with their old unwanted electronics. And many individuals were inspired, given that electrical items comprise the fastest-growing waste stream in the world.
One such individual was Fiona Hoggard, director of a fundraising consultancy, who, over the years, had grown concerned about the growing pile of unused electricals at her house. Like most people, she tends to hang onto old laptops, cameras, headphones, and so forth, believing they might be needed in the future. However, that is only sometimes the case.
And like most people, she was surprised that over 75% of electrical devices contained precious metals, which made sense to recycle and reclaim the valuable materials.