Europe Only Correctly Recycles 35 Percent of Its E-Waste

Our love for renewing our gizmos and electrical fare is causing a huge e-waste pile-up. Now a new UN report reveals how Europe's mismanaged e-waste is equitable to a "10 meter high brick wall stretching from Oslo to the toe of Italy."

Mismanaged waste refers to discarded electrical equipment that hasn't been disposed of properly. Earlier this year, a United Nations University report found that the world produced 41.8 million tonnes of e-waste in 2014. During the new two-year investigation funded by the European Union and dubbed "Countering WEEE (waste electrical and electronic equipment) Illegal Trade" (CWIT), researchers looked at the flows of e-waste in and out of Europe.

Over the phone, Jaco Huisman, scientific coordinator of the CWIT project, told me that much of the public and the media in Europe still thought that e-waste was being dumped on sites in Africa. The problem, however, is much closer to home.

"We found out that the majority of illegal trade and undesired activities is actually happening in Europe. From the 9.5 million tonnes of waste that the Europeans are generating, we are only collecting 3.3 million tonnes officially," explained Huisman.

The researchers discovered that while 35 percent (3.3 million tonnes of 9.5 million tonnes) of used waste electronics and equipment ditched by consumers ended up in official recycling systems, the remaining 6.2 million tonnes were either dumped into bins, recycled incorrectly (without removing toxic components), or exported out of Europe.

Theft of key components such as hard disks, copper wires, precious metals from waste electronics, or components such as circuit boards, which can be sold on to waste processors, also results in a loss of between 800 million euros and 1.7 billion euros annually. While the researchers initially suspected large organized crime units to be fuelling the e-waste black market, they found that the market was sustained more by individuals, traders, and smaller groups.

"We have not been able to provide evidence that there is really a large scale [organized crime unit]. The problem is actually that the type of crime that we do observe a lot is happening at all of these flows and in a really distributed nature. So there's a lot of individuals, small companies, and traders involved in doing things illegally. It's loosely organized networks doing relatively small crimes, but the total combined is causing a significantly large environmental and economic problem in the end," said Huisman. "That also makes it a lot harder to tackle than if it were a few small mafia groups," he said.

Under EU law, member countries are required to dispose of e-waste correctly, making sure they are devoid of toxic components. However, the researchers report found that 30 percent of EU members hadn't enforced the prerequisite regulations, and that existing national penalties were not severe enough to deter countries from wrongful behaviour. According to the report, an estimated 150 million to 600 million euros (US $165 million to $658 million) is lost annually when EU member states do not comply with EU e-waste disposal regulations.

The possible solution, said Huisman, is to bring together different stakeholders and come up with a strategic roadmap that improves the collection and treatment of e-waste in Europe. According to Huisman, their research could also be applied in countries like the US, where "e-waste is subject to far less oversight than it is in Europe," he added in a press release.