If the lines outside Apple stores around the world are anything to go by, the newly-announced iPhone 6 is set to replace many an older model. Just three days after the phone’s launch on September 19, Apple announced that the company has sold over 10 million units of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, breaking their previous launch weekend record of 9 million units.
Consumers are frothing at the mouth, desperate to get their hands on the newest and best gadgets. But what about the old ones? Where do old iPhones, computers, tablets and even household appliances go when they die?
The E-Waste Problem
Basically, the quick turnover in today’s tech landscape has given rise to a whole lot of e-waste. In an effort to keep electronics out of landfills, a slew of advocacy groups have popped up urging people to refrain from simply tossing their old electronics, and opt for recycling.
And this advocacy has worked—the Global Green and Recycled Mobile Phone Market is growing at a CAGR of 17.1 percent from 2013-2018.
Mobile Phone Recycling Chain
Recycling old electronics has some major benefits, as it allows manufacturers to retrieve valuable raw materials, prevents these materials from polluting the environment and it allows consumers to feel like they’ve done their part. Right?
Wrong.
It’s not really that simple. While all those benefits are technically true, e-waste goes a lot further than simply dropping your old phone is a box at Best Buy, grabbing a latte and calling it a day.
As of 2009, we were producing around 40 million metric tons of e-waste per year. At the time, nearly 13% of the world’s e-waste was recycled by developing countries, which are processing waste from their own growing economies as well as from developed countries. Processing in the case means shredding, burning and dismantling waste electronics, often in unsafe conditions.
E-Waste by Product Type, 2013
This kind of informal processing of e-waste has led to some serious health concerns.
According to the World Health Organization, “e-waste-connected health risks may result from direct contact with harmful materials such as lead, cadmium, chromium, brominated flame retardants or polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), from inhalation of toxic fumes, as well as from accumulation of chemicals in soil, water and food. In addition to its hazardous components, being processed, e-waste can give rise to a number of toxic by-products likely to affect human health. Furthermore, recycling activities such as dismantling of electrical equipment may potentially bear an increased risk of injury”.
And this isn’t a new concept. The Institute of Physics (IOP) published a study back in 2011, which took air samples from Taizhour of Zhejiang province—one of the largest e-waste processing areas in China, where more than 60,000 people dismantle more than two million tons of e-waste per year— in order to study the impact of these hazardous materials on lung health.
According to an IOP article published at the time, lead researchers on the study concluded that, “the ‘open’ dismantlement of e-waste must be forbidden with more primitive techniques improved. As the results show potential adverse effects on human health, workers at these sites must also be given proper protection.”
Spoiler alert: Not much has changed since 2011.
Never Fear! Humanity Isn’t Going to be Buried Under a Mountain of defunct iPhones Quite Yet
While the outlook might seem bleak, it’s not all fire and brimstone in the recycled cell phone sphere. It’s a bit of a double-edged sword, but the exponential growth of the problem (as of 2013, the volume of e-waste produced per year globally was around 42.2 million metric tons) in recent years has forced regulatory bodies to take notice, and tighten the rules regarding the handling of hazardous e-waste materials. Many new standards have been designed to gain better control over e-waste processing techniques, and safety measures are slowly being implemented to control the risk and concentration of toxic chemicals in the environment.
While the illegal export of e-waste from developed countries is still a major challenge faced by developing countries, governments in these areas have tightened their regulations on the import, processing, and dumping of e-waste in their countries, in order to mitigate some of the harmful effects.
“During the last few years, various international calls for action have highlighted the need of strategic interventions in the field of e-waste…Currently, there are a number of international initiatives that are addressing global e-waste management and trade concerns, as well as issues with environmental pollution due to e-waste,” states the WHO website on e-waste.
These initiatives, along with the UN-headed StEP (Solving the E-Waste Problem) program, and the fact that the global e-waste management market is growing might be a reason for some cautious optimism for the future of e-waste.
For more information on e-waste, recycled electronics and green tech, visit www.TechNavio.com.
