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E-waste - Coggle Diagram
E-waste
Solutions
Greater adoption of buyback policies and growth of the second-hand electronics market through the removal of taxes and introduction of subsidies
Increased action towards urban mines, by either developing a national policy, introduction legislation on mining companies, or grants to existing recycling companies
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Citations
Geneva Environment Network. “The Growing Environmental Risks of E-Waste.” Geneva Environment Network, 20 Nov. 2021,www.genevaenvironmentnetwork.org/resources/updates/the-growing-environmental-risks-of-e-waste/.
Gill, Gitanjali Nain . “Electronic Waste.” Encyclopædia Britannica, 26 May 2016, www.britannica.com/technology/electronic-waste.
Heacock, Michelle, et al. “E-Waste and Harm to Vulnerable Populations: A Growing Global Problem.” Environmental Health Perspectives, vol. 124, no. 5, May 2016, pp. 550–555, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4858409/, https://doi.org/10.1289/ehp.1509699.
“WEEE Recycling Resources | Animations | Process | Videos | Sims Recycling UK.” Web.archive.org, 6 Jan. 2015, web.archive.org/web/20150106162925/www.simsrecycling.co.uk/Resources/WEEE-Recycling. Accessed 9 July 2023.World Economic Forum.
A New Circular Vision for Electronics Time for a Global Reboot in Support of the United Nations E-Waste Coalition PLATFORM for ACCELERATING the CIRCULAR ECONOMY PLATFORM for ACCELERATING the CIRCULAR ECONOMY PLATFORM for ACCELERATING the CIRCULAR ECONOMY. 2019.
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What is e-waste?
E-waste has been defined as any discarded electrical, or electronic devices
E-waste is known for causing several health issues of not disposed of properly, and is considered a waste of precious, non-renewable REEs
A drop in the life span of computers, faster product refresh cycles, lower quality materials for affordable models and growing adoption of devices has led to greater amounts of e-waste.
A report by the World Economic Forum suggests that e-waste represents an industry worth over $65 billion by merely by the value of the unused material.
Problems with re-using, and re-cycling e-waste
On one hand, recycling of e-waste has already led to economic benefits, with one recycler in China having already extracted more cobalt than typical mines. This process of urban mining has become cost, and labour effective.
However, the process of recycling requires significant upfront investment, either through hiring workers to work in dangerous conditions, or through developing complex machines to automate the seperation of materials from a used device
Less than 20% of all waste is recycled, with the remaining 80% either disposed off in a landfill or informally recycled through techniques potentially hazardous to human health
Increased levels of e-waste has led to greater levels of lead, airborne dioxins and heavy metal in road dust. The Agbogbloshie area of Ghana for example, has been ranked as one of the world’s 10 worst toxic threats as a result of the annual importation of e-waste from Western Europe