A New Life for E-Waste
Creative and Responsible Ways to Retire Our Electronica
I have used six mobile handsets in my 10-year relationship with personal communication devices. Forty-five pairs of earphones. Five headsets. Two smartwatches. Countless batteries to power other electronic devices.
And I am just one woman with her electronic needs and waste.
Neeta, a housewife, explains that she has used two toasters in the last seven years, bought an air fryer last summer and just replaced an old laptop.
Shaily is a 21-year-old influencer who upgraded her two-year old phone to the newest model a month ago because it has the best camera in the lineup. When I ask her how many phones she has upgraded this way, she opens a cabinet that contains four brand new-looking smartphones with their tangled charging cords. What are these unused phones doing in this cabinet mausoleum? Where should they go?
In a report by the United Nations, lack of awareness about recycling drives was stated as the biggest barrier to recycling e-waste. The general public has very limited venues to recycle their electronic devices. Most people aren’t even aware if their electronic products can be recycled or not, and end up throwing them out with the rest of the trash. There are several categories and aspects to recycling electronic items and the information available can be rather confusing and exhausting.
But this burgeoning e-waste is ultimately going to affect each and every one of us. Globally, 5.6 billion people have access to personal communication devices and this number is increasing dramatically. The flipside of easy access to technology is generation of e-waste.
The United Nations Environment Program reports that every year 50 million tons of e-waste is generated across the globe. That’s about 200 times heavier than the Willis Tower, and would fill about 20 football fields! Only 20 percent of this e-waste is recycled; the rest of it becomes scrap. A lot of these parts are treated only to be dumped in the ground, affecting soil quality and decomposition rates. Many of these are incinerated in foreign third-world economies, releasing toxins in the environment.
The need for a sustainable solution to address the growing demand and disposal of electronic items is clear. It is time we looked around our houses, inside drawers, stowed-away baskets and the garage to find the used and discarded electronica and do something about them.
As it happens, only metal, glass, or plastic parts can be recycled. Hazardous chemicals like mercury and lead are treated and disposed of as electronic waste so as not to disrupt soil structures in landfills. But many plastic casings, shells, switches and non-valuable metals on circuit boards are often dumped — TV screens, LCDs, broken glass panels and skeletal structures end up in landfills. These can take up to three centuries or more to decompose. This means that while they might not cause direct damage to some animals in the sea (often portrayed as the most inimical form of plastic pollution), these landfills will be filled with teeming leftovers of our electronica over the years, which will only build up.
Imagine the landfills overflowing, a Willis Tower of waste, growing even taller! That is a scary, but a completely possible reality, because our electronic usage isn’t slowing down.
Yes, actively recycling electronics is a clear solution. But before we get into the specifics of how we do that, let’s consider whether we need all of these electronic products in the first place. Rethinking a purchase and considering whether it is a need-based or a want-based decision could make a big difference.
The electronic elephant in the room of e-waste is our unsustainable levels of production and consumption. This is not a new phenomenon. Since the early 1960s, companies have been adopting the deplorable practice of perceived obsolescence, where novel devices are produced simply to drive the idea that they serve a higher purpose than their outdated cousins. One of the recent examples: in 2018 Apple rolled out a software update for the IOS operating system in the iPhone 6 series, which did not perform efficiently on the then-available mobile handset, prompting customers to upgrade to the new model that could handle the update.
Many tech products are also designed with settings that force the user to buy more or quicker — some printer cartridges have built-in settings of disabling their use when ink levels are low. Not empty, but low — indicating that there is still potential in the product to be used but its design pathways encourage quicker and incomplete consumption. These practices are quietly carried out by companies to increase consumption and thereby increase product waste. The e-waste, thus, will keep piling with no space in landfills to fill it in. It would not take long for this waste to be dumped into the ground, close to water pipelines and resources.
What Can We Do?
There is a growing focus on sustainable e-waste management, with government agencies and treaties actively encouraging e-recycling. Currently there is no US federal law that enforces the recycling of e-waste. But many states have set up commissions that habituate the practice of e-recycling. This creates an inbuilt avenue for recycled and reusable materials to be channeled back into the system. Residents of the city can drop off their computers, televisions, fax machines, portable players, and more to be recycled. While many other states have no enforced laws yet, many independent organizers, non-profit organizations, and local authorities have recycling drives for their citizens. Insistence from an e-waste conscious public for laws and policies driving e-recycling will help in creating a standardized system for healthy e-recycling practices.
While these laws are very necessary, how does one have information or access to this information? One of the key issues is the lack of public information about the same. There have been some small scale efforts to create more awareness. The Electronics Recycling Coordination Clearinghouse, or ERCC, is a forum for coordination and information exchange of e-waste recycling who manage consumer awareness surveys and have information about state laws on recycling. Some other e-waste information aggregators include Greener Gadgets by CES, which has a recycle locator and repair locations, and Call2Recycle has comprehensive information, from the how-to to the what-now, of the recycling process.
Innovation in Repurposed Electronics Is Here!
There have also been many new exciting innovations in e-waste management. Robotic process for e-waste sorting and monitoring uses Internet of Things (IoT) technology to track the amount of trash, identify the material, and work towards an efficient zero-waste disposal system. Some new innovative additions to e-waste management include sustainable urban mining, circular systems for rare-earth elements, and advanced refurbishing. Reconme is a British-startup that collects your unwanted devices, wipes any remnant data, refurbishes them with a new warranty, and offers them at a lower price tag — giving IoT devices a second life. The refurbishing agenda has also played an active role in reducing the “decarbonisation divide” in African countries, where many of the electronic waste items are sent to be landfilled and burned in acid baths. Intermediary e-waste businesses in countries like Ghana have come up with innovative solutions to extract materials from the waste into resellable elements and re-assembled electronic devices. Another design-oriented approach is reusing treated materials from the waste to create repurposable objects of utility and art. Many new attempts at considering e-waste as a raw material are being taken up, with a surge of interest in offerings at the intersection of art and sustainability.
Cuprix is a student venture that, on order, collects e-waste, assesses it for reuse and recycling, and creates utility products from them. Items that can no longer be recycled after treatment — like plastic casings, circuit board waste, and damaged glass screens — are used to create products of utility, furniture, and art for working and living spaces. These products can also be repurposed into other forms, keeping the process of product innovation circular.
Despite the grassroots efforts to kickstart e-recycling and related innovations, the activity is nowhere close to becoming a habit yet. Lack of awareness and inaccessibility remain great challenges. These can be tackled by setting up awareness drives with local agencies and involving community participation in design and ideation of the process. Government authorities should actively promote the habit of repurposing through campaigns and social media activation. Salvaging and creating value through sustainable product innovation will help us confront this problem in creative, desirable ways.
Electronics that ease our everyday life should not end in heaps in a landfill, shortening the life of our planet. Every single person can act and reduce e-waste on an individual level by reusing, recycling, and repurposing their devices. These habits need to be proactively backed by legislative laws and regulations that would require community participation to create awareness about the tipping point we are at in our electronic waste production. An environmentally conscious habit creation in society is a step-by-step process that requires time and targeted efforts. The time to act on e-waste for a sustainable future is now! Reconsider your digital product purchases and refurbish your devices. In the event of a new purchase, make sure you recycle your old devices at the many avenues listed and more. This helps the system recruit parts that can be utilized again and reduce excess production. Supporting innovative e-recycling efforts will create a holistic impact in the habit building of incorporating it in our daily lives. Participation in recycling drives helps in involving more people and creating awareness. Awareness and action can create more avenues for easier e-recycling. If we all do our parts in this journey, a sustainable electronic future could be achieved.
