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Africa’s e-waste situation in five images
19th November 2020
In 2019 alone, recoverable material like gold, silver, copper, platinum and other such materials worth US$57 billion were lost to improperly recycled electronic waste.
Not many of us consider how we dispose of or will dispose of used electronic and mobile devices after they’ve served their purpose. While researching this topic two years ago, many individuals I spoke with said they disposed of their devices either by selling or passing them down to second-hand users or to the informal scrap metal industry where a large percentage of used electronic equipment go to be recycled.
These players take the items apart, extract what is useful to them using largely crude techniques and dispose of remains in landfills and incineration sites where the degradation of these equipment go on to contaminate everything they come in contact with, from the soil to surrounding water bodies and the aquatic lives in it.
Global conversations around climate change have stirred action about single-use plastic and increased awareness about the need to adopt more sustainable materials across various sectors.
But it would seem, with the increasing manufacture of short-term cyclic technology products, there isn’t enough noise being made about how these shorter life-spanned gadgets are being disposed of. They have as much if not more harmful effects on the environment and in human/animal life as do plastic.
The past year saw a record increase in the amount of electronic waste generated according to data gathered in The Global E-waste Monitor 2020: Quantities, flows and the circular economy potential report.
In 2019, 53.6 million metric tons (Mt) of electronic waste were generated globally and only 17.4% of this was officially documented as properly collected and recycled. According to the report, total e-waste generation increased in 2019 increased by 9.2 Mt from 2014 and is an indication that recycling is still not at pace with the speed of e-waste generation across the world.
In terms of composition, the most amount of e-waste generated in 2019 falls into the category of Small equipment. This includes electronic and electrical equipment (EEE) like fans, cameras, radios etcetera. At the other end of the spectrum are items categorised as Lamps which include every light giving device from bulbs to torches.
Painting a larger picture, EEEs categorised as Temperature exchange equipment (air conditioners, refrigerators), Large equipment (gas cookers, dishwashers), as well as EEEs in the Lamps and Small equipment category are increasingly comprised in the total weight of e-waste generated globally. They point to an increased need for improved quality of living and less reliance on manual labour in many households.
Composition of e-waste generated globally in 2019
While compared to other regions the African continent produces less amount of e-waste, a significant amount of its e-waste volume results from transboundary movement of e-waste across regions typically across the global North-South route. Studies from last year as discussed in the report indicate that there is an increasing dynamism about the transboundary movement of e-waste beyond the global North-South route.
In the continent, North Africa produced the most e-waste in 2019 at 1.3 Mt while countries in the Central Africa region produced the least at 0.2 Mt.
North Africa produces the most e-waste across the continent
Nigeria, Egypt, South Africa, Angola and Ethiopia are leading across the continent for the most producers of e-waste.
Higher consumption of electrical and electronic equipment (EEE) as fuelled by increasing urbanization, higher disposable income and industrialization have been said to account for a marked increase in the production of e-waste in the continent. Ownership varies across income levels with those within the low income level still able to account for mobile phones, electric lamps/bulbs, and perhaps a refrigerator.
There’s also the shorter lifespan and cyclic nature of smaller equipment like mobile devices with very little known formal routes of recycling or takeback programs by manufacturers and wholesalers.
Only 0.9% of e-waste generated on the continent in 2019 can be said to have been accounted for and recycled appropriately. Most of this collection and recycling was recorded in southern Africa with no activity recorded for the north Africa region in the period.
In most parts of the continent, informal recyclers supersede formal recyclers who are few and often do not come to mind at first when an individual considers how to dispose of an electronic or electrical equipment.
In countries like Nigeria, regulatory bodies like the National Environmental Standards and Regulations Enforcement Agency (NESREA) have ratified laws to enforce responsible collection and disposal of EEEs. The creation of the E-waste Producers Responsibility Organization of Nigeria (EPRON) in 2018 has brought together stakeholders in the space including large corporations like Microsoft and Helwett-Packard to commit to introducing measures to increase the ethical collection and disposal of e-waste.
Similar regulatory and policy moves have been made elsewhere including Rwanda, South Africa, Cameroon and Ghana where the largest scrap metal and e-waste dumpsite in Africa now resides.
Only a very small fraction of e-waste produced in Africa is responsibly collected and recycled
In my earlier report, Dr. Ifeanyi Ochonoghor, CEO of E-Terra Technologies, an e-waste management company based in Lagos cited the heavy presence of informal players as one of the major concerns about e-waste recycling in the country and it remains a huge problem to date not just in Nigeria but the rest of the continent.
Perhaps finding ways to equip this huge segment of the industry and funnel their efforts into more formal responsible recyclers like E-Terra is more beneficial.
However, there’s the general lack of public awareness about the dangers of this kinds of waste to tackle. Everyone knows plastic is bad, but not many think about how an old phone or toaster burning in a landfill in their state or county might be problematic.
Despite existing laws that regulate the transboundary movement of e-waste, there’s still a lot of work that needs to go into effecting and upholding them to stub the inflow of e-waste especially into regions like Africa where a substantial percentage of these imports are outdated or dysfunctional and not at all beneficial to any segment of the population.
https://techcabal.com/2020/11/19/africas-e-waste-situation-in-five-images/
Where do DC’s electronics go when they die?
November 11, 2020
As District residents prepare for Thanksgiving and the subsequent Black Friday and Cyber Monday, many will be thinking about upgrading to new gadgets. Less discussed at the family Thanksgiving meal, however, is what we do with all the electronic devices we toss away, otherwise known as e-waste. While electronics were finally banned from DC’s waste stream in 2018, there’s considerable work to be done on e-waste if the District wants to meet its goal of diverting 80% of solid waste by 2032.
E-waste is now the fastest-growing global trash stream as Americans increasingly own and discard gadgets. In 2013, the average American household owned approximately 24 electronic products. According to the Global E-Waste Monitor, U.S. consumers generated almost 7 million tons of e-waste in 2019 alone (the current EPA estimate is closer to 3 million tons but only includes selected electronics). But e-waste recycling has not caught up with consumer demand — with estimated recycling rates between 15% and 36%, most e-waste ends up in the dump.
DC’s electronics recycling program, eCYCLE DC, collected more than 970 tons of e-waste for recycling in 2017. While we know that e-waste is growing across the country, it’s hard to find data on DC’s situation. Since the last DC residential waste sort was done in 2007, it’s hard to gauge exactly how much electronic waste is entering the local waste stream. But according to eCYCLE’s 3-year assessment, more drop-off options are needed for District residents.
In DC, convenience continues to be a major issue. Given the need to address e-waste, in February 2020, DC announced plans to double its e-cycling efforts, including service in Department of Parks and Recreation (DPR) recreation centers and DC Libraries. Unfortunately, the plan was derailed by the pandemic when most DC facilities were closed.
Presently, District residents can drop off unwanted electronic equipment every Saturday at the Fort Totten Transfer Station or sporadic library drop-offs. Lately, long lines have plagued the Fort Totten Transfer Station, threatening to take up a good part of a resident’s day.
The District is not alone in facing challenges disposing of electronics. To date, no federal law requires the recycling of e-waste. Other jurisdictions are struggling with convenient ways to collect and properly dispose of or recycle e-waste. Urban areas like Staten Island in New York City are having the same problems of limited options and budget shortfalls.
E-waste isn’t just taking up space in landfills. Electronics can have toxic additives or other hazardous substances, such as mercury, lead, or flame retardants, posing a major health and environmental hazard in landfills and impacting groundwater and animals. Recent studies have also found evidence of health effects from e-waste exposure in both children and adults, ranging from thyroid dysfunction to changes observed at the cellular level.
One promising avenue is repairing, repurposing, reusing, upcycling and salvaging valuable parts. Given the gold, silver, and copper in products, some municipalities are reframing e-waste as a resource instead of a problem, recognizing the value in extracting metals from e-waste as a more cost effective and environmentally friendly method than mining virgin materials.
Nationally, EPA is trying to tackle this issue with improved management of electronics throughout the product lifecycle with the National Strategy for Electronics Stewardship.The agency touts the strategy as a way to “create green jobs, lead to more productive reuse of valuable materials, and support a vibrant American recycling and refurbishing industry.”
In the meantime, as the lifespan of our technology shrinks but its importance in our lives grows, the District will need to work hard to make sure all those discarded electronics have an environmentally sustainable place to go.
https://ggwash.org/view/79579/where-do-dcs-electronics-go-when-they-die
News! EnviroLeach Recovers Tin and Copper from Printed Circuit Board Material
VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / November 5, 2020 / EnviroLeach Technologies Inc. ("EnviroLeach"), (CSE:ETI)(OTCQB:EVLLF)(FSE:7N2:) is pleased to report on advances in its innovative e-waste processing technology. The Company has made significant progress in the simultaneous extraction of tin and copper from end-of-life printed circuit board assemblies ("PCBAs").
An extensive 12-month laboratory test program has resulted in a multi-metal recovery process for the extraction of tin and copper from PCBAs. The metals recovery involves the initial mechanical separation of the PCBAs into a copper rich concentrate and a non-metallic fraction. The copper rich concentrate is then treated hydrometallurgically to dissolve the copper and tin into solution under ambient temperature and pressure conditions. Following dissolution, the copper is recovered using conventional electrowinning technology as almost pure copper metal. The tin is removed from solution using proven physical separation methods to produce a marketable tin oxide product.
The test results confirmed the ability of EnviroLeach's process to effectively extract a nearly pure copper metal, grading >99%, and recover up to 92.6% of the tin in the form of a valuable tin oxide product (see Figure 1).
Figure 1: Copper and tin oxide (powder) recovered from PCBAs
The Company is currently developing a detailed process flow sheet which will be applied in an upcoming pilot scale testing program. Pilot scale testing will confirm the scalability, recoveries, costs, and other operating parameters of the new combined copper/tin recovery process.
The recovery of copper and tin from PCBAs has the potential to give the EnviroLeach process a distinct economic advantage compared to conventional smelting. When combined with EnviroLeach's current processing technology, the copper and tin recovery phase results in an over 80% mass reduction of PCBAs. This mass reduction results in significantly reduced downstream extraction and refining related charges, and higher metal payments. In addition, the recovery and sale of tin creates potential for increased operating margins.
The novel and cost-effective copper and tin recovery process will potentially provide a domestic, more environmentally friendly, and low CO2E emission alternative to the current smelting of whole PCBAs, and result in a substantial contribution towards the achievement of an eco-friendly global circular economy.
Ish Grewal, Vice President comments, "The last 12 months of extensive research and laboratory tests have confirmed the viability of the tin/copper recovery process. The potential high mass reduction delivers multiple benefits such as the higher concentration of residual precious metals, the reduction of smelting and shipping costs, and of course the reduction of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions associated with the current smelting of whole PCBs. I am excited about our recent accomplishments and look forward to the commercialization of another disruptive and eco-friendly alternative to the incumbent processes. Our compelling technology platform can provide an important contribution to the adoption of circular economy systems in the primary and secondary metals sectors."
http://www.digitaljournal.com/pr/4867734
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