Click here to read Part One of our series on e-waste, where we contextualise the growing crisis. You can also click here for Part Two, where we examine the environmental, human, and economic cost of e-waste.
The global e-waste crisis generates millions of tonnes of discarded smartphones, TVs, servers, and other electronics every year. Just 17.4% of the e-waste stream is collected and properly recycled. The resulting consequences for humanity, our planet, and the economy are becoming increasingly severe.
In the previous parts of this series, we examined why e-waste is such a large and thorny problem. We looked at its environmental impact, and the ways in which it harms both people and our planet. We also examined the economic waste that stems from improperly disposing of broken electronics. The practice, the WEO finds, results in the loss of billions of dollars in unreclaimed rare earth metals every year.
In many ways, e-waste is another symptom of capitalistic overconsumption. Electronics are being designed and sold increasingly as cheap and disposable. This, combined with a failure on behalf of governments to regulate corporate activity are driving huge growth in e-waste. The problem is not insurmountable. However, much like climate change, there is no single solution to the e-waste crisis.
E-waste: the big, obvious solutions
Regulation of manufacturers to ensure longer product lifespans, more rigorous requirements for recycling programs, and efforts to tackle corruption and human rights abuses in the supply chain are all vital steps towards overcoming this problem.
Barbara Metz, Executive Director or Environmental Action German, argues that “Producers of electronics must bear more responsibility for the environmental problems caused by their products.” She adds that the “financial burden” faced by electronics producers generating e-waste is minimal. Because such a small amount of e-waste ever ends up back in a recycling plant for organisations to pay to recycle, manufactuers rarely pay to have them processed. “This must end now,” she says. Electronics manufacturers should be required to participate in e-waste return and recycling networks. She adds that that collection and reuse targets must become legally binding. Producers offering short-lived and poorly repairable equipment should also bear higher costs.”
Regulators in the EU are making progess. Legislation like the right to repair is lengthening the lifespans of devices. However, governments and companies outside the EU must also act to effect lasting e-waste reduction. This is especially true in low-income areas of the world where a large amount e-waste ends up.
There are also some interesting technological developments that could work alongside regulatory and consumption-reduction efforts to bring the e-waste stream under control.
Changing our approach to technology ownership could be a valuable first step, argue Guy Ryder and Zhao Houlin of the UN and ITU, respectively. Device-as-a-service business models present one potential avenue. “This is an extension of current leasing models, in which consumers can access the latest technology without high up-front costs,” they write. “With new ownership models, the manufacturer has an incentive to ensure that all resources are used optimally over a device’s lifecycle.”
Technology as part of the solution
Solving the e-waste problem in an increasingly technology-dependent world is a complex and challenging prospect.
However, while structural and regulatory changes to electronics design, consumption, and disposal are at the core of the solution, there are some interesting technological developments that also promise to help tackle the crisis. These discoveries and developments range from the exceedingly high-tech to the shockingly simple.
Biodegradable circuits
One way to reduce the amount of electronics in landfills is to eliminate the need to recycle them. One reason why e-waste is such a pernicious issue is the complexity in separating useful and useless parts of each device. Each device contains some materials that are banal but unrecyclable. Others are actively toxic, and some can only be recycled once separated from their surrounding components. Lastly, there are others that are immensely valuable but very hard to recover. It’s a complicated, tangled mess.
One team of researchers at North Carolina State University is taking a novel approach to the problem. The team is tackling the issue of e-waste by developing devices that are “simultaneously recyclable and biodegradable.”
The result of their experiments is an electronic patch made largely of a renewable biomaterial that can be composted. The electrical circuits are made from silver nanowires that can be reclaimed as the rest of the patch biodegrades.
Yong Zhu, a professor and one of the device’s developers, said in an interview that “The electronic patch can, after further development, be used for a wide range of applications, such as human health monitoring, electronic textiles, sports performance monitoring, soft robotics, prosthetics, and human–machine interfaces.”
Robotic recycling
One of the most detrimental effects of e-waste is on the health of people exposed to recycling operations.
E-waste typically contains multiple hazardous materials, including lead, mercury, and cadmium. These are not only environmentally devastating, but have grave health consequences for those responsible for recycling them. Improper e-waste “recycling” practices have been linked to serious health issues. These issues affect both in those who work in these facilities and unborn generations.
Robots are used throughout just about every industry to increase productivity and safety. As such, they are a natural fit for the e-waste recycling process. Intelligent robotics are increasingly able to separate types of material, isolate hazardous waste, and sort through e-waste without risking a human’s health. The issue is that it remains legal and cheaper to ship e-waste from producer regions like Europe and North America to places like Ghana (which also produce significant amounts of e-waste domestically) than to build the necessary infrastructure.
The countries that are home to the world’s biggest electronics manufacturers need to take responsibility for modernising their e-waste recycling infrastructure. Not only this, but they have a moral and pragmatic imperative to support the modernisation of e-waste recycling capabilities in countries that both bear the brunt of the e-waste crisis and represent some electronics manufacturers’ fastest-growing markets.
Vegemite?
In Australia, a recent discovery could provide a refreshingly affordable, low-tech solution of plastic pollution and e-waste. A team of scientists have started using yeast for its properties as a “biosorbent”. Specificallty, they are using spent brewer’s yeast—also a key ingredient in Vegemite and Marmite.
“In order to achieve a selective metal recovery, we investigated spent brewer’s yeast as an effective and environmentally friendly biosorbent,” said Dr Klemens Kremser who helped conduct the study. The scientists used spent brewing yeast to separate aluminium, copper and zinc by means of adsorption. The yeast was also reused up to five times, separating additional types of metal from samples of e-waste.
Using yeast to more effectively separate trace rare earth metals from e-waste, Klemser adds, “reduces the need of primary resources, thus helping to reduce the environmental impact of improper e-waste recycling.”
- Sustainability Technology
