E-waste is any electronic product that is no longer needed and gets discarded because it can’t be fixed, is incompatible with newer technology, or has become obsolete and reached its end of life.
E-waste can be any electronic product, including hard drives, computers, smartphones, televisions and monitors, networking switches, storage arrays, and more.(What Is E-Waste and How Much Does It Cost IT? | Pure Storage, n.d.).
As per the World Economic Forum, in the U.S., the recycling rate of e-waste soars by nearly 25% in 2019. The remaining 75% of the total e-waste is deposited in several places owing to a dearth of suitable recycling alternatives.
For instance, around 53.6 million tons of electronic waste was produced globally in 2019, according to the UN’s Global E-waste Monitor 2020.
The raw materials in this e-waste were about $57 billion – with copper, iron, and gold contributing a major share to this amount. However, merely a sixth of this price ($10 billion) is recuperated in an eco-friendly manner.
By making use of the right technology, the waste generated from electronic products can become a sustainable source of precious metals.
Today’s recycling technologies, however, make sure that e-waste is treated in an ecofriendly way, with high efficacy and reduced carbon footprint, at an affordable cost.
Currently, there are two leading methods for recycling precious metals from e-waste: one is de-manufacturing, which involves manual dismantling of the electronics so as to use the raw materials that can be recovered, and the other method is shredding, in this the electronic products are dumped into huge shredders to cut down the need to manually sort and separate the components.
Considering the global depletion of natural resources, these advanced recycling technologies offer various benefits such as increased energy efficacy and reduced demand for mining of new raw materials(Recycling Technologies for Precious Metals E-Waste Recovery, 2021).
With increasing volumes of amounts of e-waste mounting around the world, e-waste recycling could outrun traditional mining with less negative impact on the environment(Admin, 2016).
Which e-waste recycling benefit: recovering valuable metals like gold, reducing environmental impact, excites you most? and how do you see it shaping the future of resource recovery?
References:
Admin, E. R. I. (2016, July 25). 7 Reasons Why E-waste Recycling Could Outrun Traditional Mining. ERI. https://eridirect.com/news/2016/07/7-reasons-why-e-waste-recycling-could-outrun-traditional-mining/
Recycling Technologies for Precious Metals E-Waste Recovery. (2021, July 29). https://www.unsustainablemagazine.com/precious-metals-e-waste-recovery/
What Is E-waste and How Much Does It Cost IT? | Pure Storage. (n.d.). Retrieved April 18, 2025, from https://www.purestorage.com/knowledge/what-is-e-waste.html
