Wasted: 50 million tonnes of e-waste every year

UNEP’s Beat Waste Pollution Video series aims at expose how our consumption patterns are leading to increasing amounts of waste. Electrical and electronic equipment - such as computers, televisions, smartphones - have become an essential part of everyday life. Their availability and widespread use have enabled much of the global population to benefit from higher standards of living. Because of the slow adoption of collection and recycling, externalities –such as the consumption of resources, the emission of greenhouse gases, and the release of toxic substances during informal recycling procedures– illustrate the problem to remain within sustainable limits. Consequently, many countries are challenged by the considerable environmental and human health risks of inadequately managed Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE), widely known as e-waste. Even countries with a formal e-waste management system in place are confronted with relatively low collection and recycling rates. As a result, the total value of all this discarded as e-waste in 2019 has been conservatively valued at US$57 billion – a sum greater than the GDP of most countries. More than 44 million tonnes of electronic and electrical waste was produced globally in 2017 – over six kilograms for every person on the planet. This is equivalent in weight to all the commercial aircraft ever built. Learn more: The global E-waste Monitor 2020 - E-waste 2.0: Recycling for sustainability - A New Circular Vision for Electronics -