Electronic Recycling Initiatives: Tackling Today’s E-waste Problem for a Better

“Apple just released the latest iPhone? Oh, wow! Let’s join the queue to get our iPhone 12 replaced.” Does this sound familiar to you? We’re not calling you out — most of us are guilty of this.

In a tech-hungry society where we’re always going after the newest and shiniest, people discard and replace devices readily. Sometimes, we replace devices due to breakdowns or slow-downs. Other times, it simply makes more sense to replace your gadgets because it’s often cheaper to buy a spanking new device than to fix a broken one.

This increase in the consumption of electronics comes with environmental costs. To feed the tech-hungry, materials for the production of new gadgets have to be mined and procured. But it’s not just that — our discarded devices generate large amounts of electronic waste (e-waste).

A mounting “tsunami of e-waste,” as Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General calls it, is forming. According to the Global E-waste Statistics Partnership (GESP), e-waste volume grew by 21% from 2014 to 2019. More recently in 2020, the volume of e-waste weighed as much as 350 cruise ships.

As the demand for electronics continues to grow alongside their hasty (and planned) obsolescence, this trend will very likely continue. That’s bad news — e-waste contains toxic substances that can seep out into our soil and water. In a report on e-waste and child health, WHO found that the health of millions of children, adolescents, and expectant mothers worldwide are jeopardized by the informal processing of discarded electronic devices.

The good news? The quantity of e-waste can be reduced through means of reuse, repair, or resale. Efforts have been made to tackle this global ecological issue. Here are three electronics recycling initiatives implemented worldwide that you should know of.

1. Solving the E-waste Problem (StEP) Initiative
The StEP initiative is a membership organization affiliated with the United Nations University. The organization was established in 2007 to explore the ways in which stakeholders can respond to challenges relating to e-waste. Among its members are some of the most prominent actors involved in the production, reuse, and recycling of Electrical and Electronic Equipment (EEE), as well as government agencies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and UN organizations.

With an aim to elaborate a set of global guidelines for the treatment of e-waste and the promotion of sustainable material recycling, StEP promotes collaboration among all e-waste stakeholders, emphasizing a holistic, scientific, but practical approach to the problem.

The organization consists of five separate task forces: Policy, ReDesign, ReUse, ReCycle, and Capacity Building. In their particular fields, these task teams undertake research and analysis and attempt to execute new ideas.

A StEP pilot project, for example, saw the Ethiopian government and international partners collaborate to develop an e-waste management strategy along with essential policies and legislation for the country so that Ethiopia will be better equipped to tackle the rise in e-waste volume that is projected to occur.

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