In 2022, the world produced 62 billion kg of electronic waste (e-waste)—the equivalent of 1.55 million trucks—double the amount generated in 2010 (Global e-waste monitor, 2024).
It’s time for remanufacturing, reuse, and recycling economies to catch up. Less waste can be produced through circular approaches to product design, business models, and procurement. By thinking ahead at the product design phase, we can ensure our devices can be repaired, re-used, recycled or returned – keeping them out of landfill, and reducing the amount of materials we extract from the Earth.
Facts & Stats
- Electronic waste (e-waste) includes unwanted electronic equipment, such as smart devices and used cables, as well as batteries and fluorescent lights (including compact fluorescent lights). The parts that make up your electronics, such as steel, glass, copper, aluminum, plastics and precious metals, can be recovered and made into new products.
- Consider donating or selling your electronic item instead of disposing them in your garbage. If we continue to throw out our devices, or store them in a closet in perpetuity, we are following old habits of the linear economy (take-make-waste). To think circular, let’s repair, replace parts (refurbish), and encourage businesses and manufacturers to take back devices for remanufacturing.
- Manufacturers and businesses can adopt reverse logistics measures to collect devices back for repair, refurbish, and remanufacture.
- The best way to reduce the impact that we have on the environment is to make sure that we can use the gadgets that we already have in our pockets for as long as possible.
- E-waste is hazardous material. Over time, electronics can leak toxic elements, like mercury and lead, which can be harmful to the environment and to humans. If thrown in the garbage, device batteries can cause fires at material recycling facilities. Donating your electronics for reuse or recycling them at safely managed sites helps control the hazards. Recycling also allows reliable resources found in electronics — recyclable plastics and even gold — to be reclaimed.
- On average, consumers keep cell phones for only two years before they trade them in or throw them out.
- A 2018 study from Tsinghua University in Beijing and Sydney’s Macquarie University found it was 13 times cheaper to mine electronic waste than it was to source new minerals by extracting it from the environment.
- According to The Global E-waste Monitor 2024, Canada generated an estimated 770 million kg of electronic waste in 2022, and the United States generated nearly 10 times that, at 7,200 million kg.
- Of the 62 billion kilograms of e-waste generated globally, half of this waste was valuable metals by weight, including $15 billion USD of gold and $19 billion USD of copper (ITU, updated 2024).
- The Global E-waste Monitor 2020 report found that the world dumped a record 53.6 million tonnes of e-waste last year — equivalent to the the weight of 350 cruise ships the size of the Queen Mary 2, or enough to form a line 125 kilometres long. That’s an increase of 21 per cent in five years, the report said. Just 17.4 per cent of it was recycled, meaning that an estimated $57 billion worth of gold, silver, copper, platinum and other high-value, recoverable materials used as components were mostly dumped or burned rather than being collected for treatment and reuse.
- It takes roughly 240 kg (530 pounds) of fossil fuels; 22 kg (48 pounds) of chemicals and 1.5 tons (1,524 litres) of water to manufacture a brand new computer.
Organize a collection event
A majority of households have old electronics kicking around. As Canadian municipalities do not offer curbside e-waste collection, many residents rely on collection events for proper management of these materials. We encourage organizations, schools, and municipalities to host an e-waste collection event for reuse and/or responsible recycling.