E-waste is defined as anything with a plug, electric cord or battery (including electrical and electronic equipment) from toasters to toothbrushes, smartphones, fridges, laptops and LED televisions that has reached the end of its life, as well as the components that make up these end-of-life products.
E-waste is also called waste electrical or electronic equipment, or WEEE for short. Currently, only a few countries have a uniform way of measuring this waste. E-waste comes from many sources including households, businesses and governments.
E-waste may contain precious metals such as gold, copper and nickel as well as rare materials of strategic value such as indium and palladium. A lot of these metals could be recovered, recycled and used as secondary raw materials for new goods. The challenge is the incredible complexity of doing this; a product can be made up of more than 1,000 different substances. E-waste may represent only 2% of solid waste streams, yet it can represent 70% of the hazardous waste that ends up in landfill.
The economic value of E-waste
The Future of E-Waste
