Laptops and Landfills: The Growing Problem of E-Waste

Written by Saee Risbud

Illustrated by Tanvi Gupta

The day is finally here — you’re home from the Apple store with a shiny new iPhone and about to unbox it. It’s been a whopping two years since you bought a new phone, so your current phone might as well be a hunk of junk. The sun’s shining, birds are chirping; you set a picture of your dog as your new wallpaper and go on your merry way. But there’s one loose thread: What exactly happens to your lame old iPhone that’s now been rendered useless? Chances are it ends up in a landfill, never to be seen again. 

There’s a term for those old, forgotten devices turned into trash: e-waste, short for electronic waste. It’s generally defined as electronic products that are no longer valuable to their users and are now rendered obsolete; this includes technological devices such as laptops, phones, and televisions, and bigger equipment such as washing machines, refrigerators, and microwaves. Most electronic devices contain precious metals (gold, silver, copper, platinum, lithium, etc.) that are recoverable and reusable, but also toxic chemicals (lead, mercury, cadmium, plastic, flame retardants, etc) that can severely harm the environment and human health. The volume of e-waste discarded globally is growing rapidly: In 2019, about 53.6 million metric tonnes of waste were generated, and only about 20% of that waste was properly recycled. This volume is only expected to grow; as our world becomes more and more dependent on technology, we will discard increasingly more waste.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of e-waste isn’t recycled, and if it is, it’s certainly not recycled responsibly. E-waste recycling is either formal or informal. Formal recycling is expensive — electronics have to be disassembled, their contents separated, and recycled under strict regulation to ensure that environmental pollution and hazards to human health are minimized. Because of its cost, many countries illegally export e-waste to China, or to developing countries like Ghana, Nigeria, India. The United States is the second largest producer of e-waste and actively participates in this practice. Wealthy countries send about 23% of their e-waste to developing countries each year. Once this e-waste is exported, the countries it ends up in recycle e-waste informally. Informal recycling is usually unlicensed and completely unregulated, and done by men, women, and even children in sweatshops and landfills under poor working conditions.

The impact of e-waste is far reaching. E-waste contributes to significant environmental degradation: It emits toxic fumes and liquids that seep into the ground and drainage systems. Burning e-waste emits gas that pollutes the air, and many times, toxic chemicals are simply dumped into local water reservoirs that severely harm the water quality, both for the earth and nearby humans. Not only that, but the people who work in informal recycling workshops have no protective gear and inhale toxic chemicals that can lead to problems such as miscarriages, stillbirths, decreased lung function, neurological issues, increased risk of cancer, and impaired thyroid function. The people who live near the area, even if they don’t directly work in informal recycling themselves, suffer from health complications due to poor water quality, and children grow up with damaged development due to exposure to toxic chemicals. 

There are no federal laws in the U.S. that govern the recycling of e-waste, or forbid it from being exported. Each state is left to its own devices, but only about half of all states even have any laws regarding e-waste or the production of long-lasting electronics. Manufacturers can purposefully ensure that their devices go bad in a few years and pull support for their repair from the market, ensuring that customers will buy the new products they release. States don’t actually have enough power to incentivize manufacturers to design better products, and they don’t take the effort to reduce the volume of e-waste exported and discarded. Unfortunately, tackling the problem of e-waste has a lot of legal and economical red tape and won’t be solved easily or quickly. 

So what can we, as individual consumers and global citizens, do? This question can feel rather overwhelming.To answer it, I asked recent McCombs School of Business graduate Sanika Bhave, who became interested in the problem of e-waste after discovering the term in Edward Humes’s “Garbology.” She’s since become a strong and passionate advocate for raising awareness about e-waste and even gave a recent TEDTalk on the subject. Now, she’s incorporated this advocacy into both her academic and professional life. As she aptly puts it, “There is very little visibility on the issue, which I think is surprising, because all of us rely on technological products to get through our day to day lives.” Raising awareness about the nature of the issue is a great first step, but we shouldn’t just stop there.

We can buy less electronics, take good care of the ones we have, and avoid falling into the trap of reckless consumption. As Bhave states, “There is no need for us to be replacing our electronic products as often as we do. A lot of the time, our consumption patterns are driven by societal pressure [such as status], and we also need to be pushing corporations to build greener technology [by using recycled materials], to also not be pushing upgrades on us when they’re not needed.” So we need to remember that we set the demand for products, and if enough of us make these changes in our own lives, we can influence the supply of extraneous electronic products. When we no longer need our electronics, we can donate them to people who need them. If they’re no longer usable, we can recycle them responsibly at facilities that take the proper care to treat both their workers and the environment fairly. Many of these places exist in Austin, and they can be found and verified with a simple Google search. 

We can also exercise our legal and political rights, which includes lobbying political institutions to pass relevant laws. Bhave mentions the Right to Repair Act. Although it never passed Congress, its simple introduction in the House “pushed Apple to reverse long-standing policy that forbade customers from being able to repair their own electronics. That really happened because consumers became aware of their own consumption. Consumers, corporations, and the legislative body need to work together.” It’s an exciting example of what consumers can do, if we just use our voices. 

So although the problem of e-waste seems complicated and difficult to resolve, as long as we make active changes starting right now, we can make a big impact. Despite the overwhelming nature of the issue, we need to remember that the biggest changes often have the smallest beginnings. Remember the lame old iPhone from two years ago? It’s not at the end of its life just yet.