Greenpeace has found that 20-50 million tonnes of electronics are discarded every year. They related this figure to a train full of discarded electronics and said with the amount of waste being created, this train could go all the way around the world 1 time. This is an incredible amount of waste, and this is a 7 year old figure.
As you can imagine, the amount of e-waste has only increased since 2005. Currently, the world is producing approximately 53 million tonnes. E-waste now makes up five percent of all municipal solid waste worldwide, nearly the same amount as all plastic packaging, but it is much more hazardous*.
E-waste is now the fastest growing component of the municipal solid waste stream because people are upgrading their mobile phones, computers, televisions, audio equipment and printers more frequently than ever before*.
Here are some facts about E-waste from the Greenpeace website:
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The average lifespan of computers in developed countries has dropped from six years in 1997 to just two years in 2005.
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Mobile phones have a life cycle of less than two years in developed countries.
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183 million computers were sold worldwide in 2004 - 11.6 percent more than in 2003.
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674 million mobile phones were sold worldwide in 2004 - 30 percent more than in 2003.
- By 2010, there will be 716 million new computers in use. There will be 178 million new computer users in China, 80 million new users in India.
