While return rates vary by country, globally just 17% of electronic waste is collected and recycled on average, according to Dr. Kees Baldé, a senior scientific specialist at UNITAR’s Sustainable Cycles Programme and a lead researcher behind the Global e-Waste Monitor. Many devices end up in landfills, which is both a hazardous pollution problem and a waste of vast quantities of metals and minerals, such as copper and palladium, that could be recycled into new products.
“People tend not to realize that all these seemingly insignificant items have a lot of value, and together at a global level represent massive volumes,” said Pascal Leroy, director general of the WEEE Forum, in a statement. “It is very easy for [small e-waste items] to accumulate unused and unnoticed in households, or to be tossed into the ordinary garbage bin.”
The European Union’s rate of e-waste recovery, at 55%, is significantly higher than in the rest of the world, due in part to decades of legislation. Member states have strict weight-based e-waste collection targets, which tend to skew toward heavier objects, contributing to the conundrum of hoarded phones.