PREVENTING E-WASTE

by Danilo Broggi

LONGITUDE N.119

Fifty million metric tonnes of e-waste is generated every year, equalling the weight of nearly 4,500 Eiffel towers. It is the world’s fastest growing waste stream and the amount is estimated to increase to 52.2 million metric tonnes by the end of 2021 unless this trend is reversed.

According to the British Petroleum Annual?report, renewable energy (solar and wind) grew by 238 GW in 2020 – 50% more than any previous expansion – not to mention geothermal and biomass – and has surpassed levels produced by nuclear power.?

Good news? Depends on how you look at it.?

First of all, we have to analyze holistically all of the industrial processes (including logistics, transport, services, etc.) that took place to achieve these results. A declared (and proven) lower CO2?emission (carbon foot print) can tell very little or even be misleading if we do not analyze the entire life cycle of the product.?

An electric vehicle (considered very "green") is not sustainable if we take into account the unquantified and unaccounted social and environmental impacts that span the life cycle, for example, of the lithium battery that powers the vehicle and the related lack of recycling and reuse options for the battery at the end of its life cycle. Not to mention the processing of sheet metal for the bodywork, the painting phase and transport.?

The transport ships, according to the United Nations International Maritime Organization, are responsible for 2.89% of global emissions. And more than 80% of goods traded in the world use merchant ships. Container ships use heavy fuel oil, which is produced using the residues of petroleum refining: it is one of the cheapest and at the same time most polluting fuels.?

And the steel needed to build the ships??

According to the IEA steel generates 7% of global energy-related carbon dioxide emissions, more than any other industrial sector. Notwithstanding, as the steel demand will continue to increase, IEA says the sector's emissions must halve by 2050 for the world to reach global climate goals. The Swedish steel colossus SSAB replaced coal with hydrogen and sold the metal to Volvo. But the costs are prohibitive. SSAB estimated in 2018 that its steel produced without fossil fuels would have been 20% to 30% more expensive. Yet, costs will decrease over time, as mentioned in a bold survey by the?Wall Street Journal?last August.?

Only a public-private approach and a systemic and medium-long term vision can help.?

Arcelor-Mittal, the largest steel producers in the world, signed an agreement in Spain last July that commits the Spanish government to cover part of?€1 billion that the steel multinational will invest in Spain to lower its CO2?emissions. The Swedish government has also collaborated with SSAB by investing directly in the project from the start.?

From the sources of energy needed to produce steel to the ability to recycle steel waste and scrap, there are some clear cases of circular economy.?

According to the Iron and Steel Institute, the United States every day recycles enough scrap steel to build 25 Eiffel Towers. The largest American steel producer, Nucor Corporation, uses only scrap steel and has planned to use clean energy such as photovoltaic energy produced by solar panels more and more.?

However, most solar panels are produced in China by exploiting the energy of coal combustion plants that “erupt” carbon dioxide - China is the largest producer of Co2 in the world. Efforts are being made in China too. The Chinese Tongwei Solar Co., the world's largest producer of solar panels listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange, has some factories that operate by hydroelectric power unlike its Chinese competitors.?

Furthermore, no one had ever worried about the disposal of these panels at the end of their working life.?

In 2019, 46 million tons of panels were estimated to have been installed and considering a solar panel’s life cycle of 30/40 years, 8 million tons of solar panels are estimated will need to be disposed of globally by 2030 and up to 80 million tons in 2050 – see the August issue of?the?MIT Technology Review.

In 2018, the waste management company Veolia, based near Paris, opened the first recycling line specifically developed for solar panels. ROSI Solar, a French start-up founded in 2017, recently announced plans to build a new recycling plant in Grenoble. The company claims to have a new process for extracting silver, silicon and other high-value materials from used panels. The plant is expected to open by the end of 2022 with a contract from Soren, a French trade association that is working to find other uses for decommissioned solar panels. Should this prove impractical, the company will remove the aluminum frame and glass before moving them to the “traditional” recycling phases for these materials.?

The volumes of e-waste are enormous.?

The world produces more than 50 million tons of e-waste annually, which weighs more than all the commercial airplanes ever made. Only 20% of this is formally recycled. It’s worth $62,5 billion, more than the GDP of most countries. There is 100 times more gold in a ton of e-waste than in a ton of gold ore, as reported by the Platform for Accelerating the Circular Economy (PACE) in partnership with The United Nations E-waste Coalition of 2019.?

Kate Crawford in her recent book “Atlas of AI” calculates that 75,000 liters of acidic water and a ton of radioactive waste are produced to refine some of the rare earths most used in electronics in general: dysprosium and terbium, just to mention two cases, – the so called black lake Baotou in China – and in Indonesia.?

She highlights what is required?“to expand our understanding of what is happening, to see what is at stake, and to make better collective decisions about what should come next.”?

It’s very difficult, but not impossible!?