E-waste

E-waste is any electrical or electronic device that has been discarded — a games console nobody plays any more, or a monitor with a cracked screen. It is one of the fastest-growing types of waste, and much of it is never collected or recycled properly.

Discarded devices contain small amounts of toxic substances, including heavy metals, so how e-waste is dealt with decides how much harm it does:

In landfill the harm happens slowly: rain seeps through buried devices and carries dissolved toxic substances down into the groundwater, which feeds wells, streams and crops, so pollution spreads far past the tip. Burning is quicker — the plastic burns away to leave the metal behind — but the fumes are toxic to breathe and the leftover ash is contaminated.

Some e-waste is exported to developing countries, where labour is cheaper and safety rules are weaker. It is pulled apart by hand with no protective equipment, so workers come into contact with toxic substances and their health suffers. Whatever cannot be sold is dumped nearby, moving the pollution to a place with fewer safe facilities.

Binning a device also means the valuable materials inside it are lost. The metals on a circuit board had to be mined, refined and transported, causing real environmental damage; if the board ends up buried, those metals cannot be used again and fresh metal must be extracted for new devices. Proper recycling recovers them.

A youth club clearing out a cupboard finds a broken games console and a cracked monitor. Sent to landfill, the metals inside are lost and toxic substances can leak into the soil; taken to a proper recycling point, the metals are recovered and the harmful parts kept out of the ground.