"Invisible" e-waste - from disposable straws to toys and tangled cables - piles up, robbing supply chains of valuable materials. A new analysis has tallied up all the small electronics that people don't typically think of as e-waste, and the numbers are shocking.
It is estimated that all the straws thrown away around the world every year weigh as much as three Brooklyn bridges. The combined weight of straws and other small consumer products considered "invisible" reaches 9 billion kilograms (9 million metric tons) every year. It's like half a million dump trucks worth of electric toothbrushes, ugly sweaters decorated with LEDs, drones and other small electronics lined up from bumper to bumper, stretching from Nairobi to Rome.
The problem with throwing these items away is that electronics often contain harmful substances like lead or mercury, which can leach from landfills and contaminate soil and water supplies. Hoarding these devices around your home is also not ideal. If these items are recycled, manufacturers can recover gold and other valuable materials. Not only would this reduce e-waste, it might even reduce the need to mine raw materials.
Discarded appliances and computers have been a problem for decades, but new analysis reveals an often-overlooked trend in which e-waste has grown into a global problem. Disposable straws are everywhere. Newer iterations of devices often come with new plugs and require new chargers.
Magdalena Charytanowicz, communications manager for the nonprofit Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Forum, said in a news release: "Consumers often don't realize that certain items contain electronic components, so those items don't end up being sent to the right [place], which is a loss."
What’s the cost of not recycling those invisible electronics? According to the WEEE Forum, approximately $9.5 billion in materials (mainly iron, copper and gold) could have been recycled in 2019 alone. The copper cables discarded last year could circle the earth 107 times. Copper is important for renewable energy, electric vehicles and more, and demand for the metal is expected to surge this decade.
E-cigarettes thrown into the trash (like other rechargeable devices) are a waste of lithium, a key battery mineral that the world needs in large quantities to transition to cleaner energy and transportation. Pascal Leroy, director general of the World Electronic and Electrical Equipment Forum, said at a press conference: "Millions of e-cigarettes are thrown into the trash every week... This is a very worrying issue."
The Brussels-based forum commissioned a new analysis of stealth electronics from the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR). The estimate is based on UNITAR's Global E-Waste Monitor, an international report last conducted in 2020 that tracks various types of e-waste.
About 55% of e-waste is collected in Europe, thanks in large part to laws requiring manufacturers to manage the waste generated by their products. Many other parts of the world lack similar Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) laws, as well as the recycling infrastructure needed to responsibly dismantle discarded products and mine them for valuable materials. The global e-waste collection rate is only 17%.
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