Get ready for #amnesteee

As part of the WEEE Forum's International E-Waste Day on 14 October, we have decided to encourage everybody to take part in #amnesteee - gather up your old electrical and electronic devices, find them a new home or dispose of them properly. We all have the power to contribute positively to the global e-waste crisis - which isn't exaggerated - but in the very prominent face of plastic pollution, few really realise the serious environmental and humanitarian impact of our choices when it comes to electronics, both in the purchasing decision and at end of life

Some facts about electronics waste - aka e-waste or WEEE (Waste Electronic & Electrical Equipment) - that everybody needs to know but few actually do.

When you throw away an old piece of electronics equipment - a mobile phone, an iron, a fridge, an old television set, a PC or laptop - what happens to it? You may think it gets recycled but only 20% actually is, globally. The rest ends up either incinerated, in landfill or is exported, often illegally, to countries in the developing world where it is processed in atrociously unsafe conditions and is resulting in a humanitarian and environmental catastrophe. It's toxic stuff, containing mercury, lead, cadmium, beryllium, brominated flame retardant plastics, to name a few. A very big cocktail of nasties. It's little wonder that we don't want it on our own doorsteps.

All of us around the world threw away something in the region of 44.7 million metric tonnes of e-waste combined in 2016. That's the equivalent weight of 4,500 Eiffel Towers. Imagine that. Every single year.

At the same time, this e-waste contains valuable materials, which are increasingly in scarce supply as we mine the earth's natural minerals and metals to extinction. Gold, silver, copper, platinum, palladium and other high-value elements, all of which are reusable materials. And the material worth of these materials is something in the region of ￡44 billion. That's right, we throw away nearly ￡50 billion worth of every year, which goes up every year. There's more gold in a tonne of e-waste than there is in a tonne of gold ore. And it's 13x more cost effective to mine e-waste than it is to mine the earth. Think about that for a second.

While the world obsesses, rightly so, about the harmful environmental effects of plastic pollution, e-waste is going under the radar and is a toxic time-bomb waiting to explode. And of course, plastic is one of the major material components in electronics, which lots of people seemingly forget.

If we don't do something about it - and the good thing is that we can all make a difference by how we treat our electronics devices that we deem surplus to requirements - that e-waste mountain that we chuck aside every year will amount to 10,000 Eiffel Towers by 2050. The environmental impact will be unfathomable. Sure, we don't see whales washing up on beaches filled with iPhones, but this is a serious situation, predicted to get much, much worse.

Just as technology advancements are contributing to this looming disaster, technology can also be the saviour. Special recycling solutions that are more automated, using artificial intelligence and robotics, are removing the human element. Companies also now recognise the value in the e-waste (or are cognisant of the raw materials shortages) and more and more are looking at recovering the materials to re-inject them back into the loop.

Electronics producers such as HP, Dell, Apple, Lexmark, etc, are increasingly recycling their products to extract usable materials for future product generations. There are laws and regulations to prevent illegal exports and making electronics manufacturers responsible for their end-of-life products, with some notable success stories. But the simple fact is we are consuming more and more electronics in all walks of life and we don't yet have the capacity to recycle it all.

Solar power, that great green technology, is a central part of the renewable energy movement. But all of those initial PV panel deployments from the late 1980s and 1990s are now reaching the end of their useful life. That's e-waste and is going to add millions and millions of tonnes to the mountain. And once again, it contains a whole load of nasties.

Electric vehicles are fantastic for emissions and reducing greenhouse gases. Except the mining of the elements that make up electric vehicle batteries are far from green, not to mention materials such as cobalt that are mined in less-than-ethical regions around the world, mostly the Congo, often by children. And at their end of life they're even less green. Just 5% of lithium-ion batteries are recycled. It's got a lot of people wondering just how green electric vehicles actually are. With 125 million EVs expected to be on the roads by 2030, what will happen to those batteries when they lose the energy deemed sufficient to efficiently power the vehicle? (Another interesting fact is that an EV battery still has 70% capacity at the end of its useful life in the vehicle... I'm no Sir David Attenborough but that's not exactly sustainability in action.)

The good news is that every single one of us can have a positive impact on e-waste. When we upgrade our phones, when we opt for a replacement TV instead of looking into repairing our old one, when we buy a brand-new laptop without considering a cheaper, just-as-good re-manufactured one, when we condemn a device to the trash when we could easily pass it on to a friend or family member, to just the way we hoard unused or unwanted electric devices around the house. We all have those technology graveyards somewhere in our homes.

On the week beginning 14 October, which also happens to be International E-Waste Day, we will be encouraging you all to take part in our #amnesteee - look through your sheds, drawers, cupboards, and gather up your old phones, broken TVs, fridges and anything else that is electrical (even cables) and take them to your local municipal waste centre, where they will be dealt with appropriately and hopefully find their way back into the loop of the electronics circular economy.

And if you have some items that are still working but for whatever reason you've upgraded, find them a new home.

Oh, and why not take a picture of your e-waste collection and post it, Snapchat it, Insta it and share it on the Book of Face with the hashtag #amnesteee. I will be....

Please share this, like this page and spread the word. E-waste is a dirty secret and the word needs to get out.

#weee #ewaste #ewasteworld #circulareconomy #amnesteee