I don’t know about you but this is a problem evident in my home as I am sure it is for many of you. Our apartment’s storage locker has a growing pile of discarded electronics including a netbook, digital projector, electronic writing board, several hard drives for which I have no use, modems, range extenders and cables. And here in the den where I do most of my writing, a discarded Chromebook sits abandoned on a shelf, while several old mobile phone models are stashed in a desk drawer. When we move sometime next year I will need to clear out all these items and bring them to a special electronic waste disposal site and who knows what will happen to them after that. It seems like such a waste.

That’s why this topic is an important one and I thank Christy for offering it to us to publish here. If you have similar tales or would like to comment please feel free to do so at the bottom of this web page.

According to a report by the United Nations of the 53.6 million tons of discarded electronic gadgets, only 17.4% were recycled. Digital waste is a significant source of environmental pollution causing potential health problems in adults and children exposed to the materials contained within them. And as consumers upgrade electronic devices and throw away old ones every year smartphones, computers, and laptops are ending up in landfills. 

Today, many organizations are raising awareness about digital waste. Businesses are starting to take steps to recycle their old electronics properly. Why? Because digital can have damaging impacts on the environment.

Here are some reasons why you should focus on the problem right now. 

• Digital Waste Releases Harmful Chemicals and Toxins – This is a major reason to pay attention to digital waste and its disposal. Electronics contain lots of metals, toxins, and chemicals that if improperly disposed of can leach into the ground and pollute the underlying aquifer as well as local surface water sources. Some of these toxins are linked to cancer and respiratory diseases. Today’s televisions, smartphones, laptops, and tablets contain harmful materials. Proactive companies as a result have started to look for safe disposal resources. Individuals and families can also access these types of resources if not local municipal and county electronic waste management initiatives. What you shouldn’t be doing is tossing this type of technology in the regular trash. Look for retailers offering trade-in programs that describe what will happen to your end-of-life device after you give it to them.
• Digital Waste Goes Into Dump Sites in Developing Countries – The Global South is increasingly being used as a garbage dump by rich countries. Disposing of digital waste is no exception. This is leading to an increase in environmental pollution and health concerns in African and Asian countries that accept digital waste. It ends up in poorly managed landfills near cities and small towns releasing toxic emissions into the water and air. And because nations in the Global South may not have state-of-the-art diagnostic and healthcare infrastructure, the diseases the digital waste causes is often poorly understood and therefore, treatments are ineffective.

• Digital Waste Contains Recoverable Valuable Materials – Many electronic gadgets such as smartphones and laptops contain valuable elements such as gold, aluminum, and silver. These can be recovered and reused to manufacture new digital products. This is becoming a growing business with many companies setting up recycling facilities to recover valuable metals. Reuse of these elements has a positive environmental impact as well reducing the need to mine for new materials. For the average consumer, a quick online search will help you find companies that may even buy back your obsolete digital devices to recover the valuable elements within them. So check it out before you throw it out. 

• Old Digital Devices Can Still Have a Second Life and Save You Money – Recently Alphabet, Google’s parent company, announced the release of Chrome Flex, an operating system to extend the life of old laptop and desktop computers. Old electronics still have value, even devices that are five years old. (Editor’s Note: I am typing on a Dell desktop I purchased six years ago and only now with the release of Windows 11 which is incompatible with my system, am I beginning to see a potential end-of-life for this workhorse system.) So you may be able to save a lot of money by refurbishing or repairing old digital devices to prolong their use. Old electronics can be sold for cash or donated to charitable programs in your local community.

Treatment Options for Digital Waste 

Can we implement e-waste recycling and reduce its growth? What would the world accomplish by implementing such strategies? Most of us when buying electronics don’t consider the long-term effects of these purchases. It is why digital waste ends up in landfills domestically or abroad. But the cost to the environment is significant and that’s why governments and non-profits are actively seeking to implement recovery, refurbishment, and reuse programs.

If you are not familiar with the term, the circular economy, it very much describes the digital waste paradigm being described here. Circular economies look at products and services from sourcing to end-of-life and develop strategies to optimize the use of resources to eliminate waste. Circular economies are all about sustainability and achieving net-zero carbon emissions.

As we direct our global efforts to mitigate climate change, rethinking digital waste within the context of circular economic principles makes sense. Companies and industries that source materials by upcycling old or used items to create new products are following these principles. 

One thing about electric clothes dryers, they appear to be built to fail, particularly the smaller models that fit on top of washing machines in stackable configurations. The dryers have small capacity, produce a ton of lint that constantly needs to be cleaned out from traps and exhaust vents. I would bet that the lint problem is half the reason these dryers fail.

Now we are renters and our stacked washer and dryer have presented problems in the past. First it was the washing machine that went. We couldn’t find a matching model to go with our stackable dryer. The result was having to improvise a stable stack of machines from two different manufacturers. We did find a solution and the machines have been fine for the last few years until this week when the dryer had its turn to fail. First, we tried to find someone to fix it. We found someone who unfortunately was unvaccinated for COVID-19. Just another complication in this pandemic scenario in which we are living.

So the alternative was to source a new dryer that would be compatible with our washing machine or could be stacked on top of it. We found one but from another manufacturer. I explained the situation to the supplier but when the shipper and installer came to our place (fully vaccinated I might add) the installation was a no-go. The reason given was that stacking machines from two different manufacturers would invalidate the warranty. When I called the supplier we were told that if the machines were mated securely the warranty would be honoured. Since we had managed to do that with two different manufacturers’ machines for the last five years, the remaining challenge was to find someone to replicate the workable solution we had produced in the past. Our alternative was to buy a matching washing machine to go with the new dryer. But that would have meant throwing out a perfectly good machine that was less than five years old and in perfect working operation.

The experience has got me thinking. How often does this happen when purchasing a washer-dryer stackable combo? How often does one machine go before the other and create a similar circumstance to the one we have experienced?

Is our circumstance the fallout from a global manufacturing model built around planned obsolescence, which by definition is the creation of new products designed to have short life expectancies to make consumers have to buy anew?

This is not my first experience of the past year with planned obsolescence. My wife’s smartphone seems to have been built to fail. When we recently visited our telecommunications provider, the answer given to all of its technical eccentricities and behaviours was to get a new model, hint, with one going on sale at Christmas.

Our vacuum cleaner, a Dyson stick less than five years old which we maintained to the manufacturer’s specifications, has now had to be replaced because of motor problems making repairing almost as costly as buying a new one. And so we have done the latter.

Then there’s my laptop, a Chromebook that has served me well to write this blog when we travel and is the backup to my desktop system. After the last update, I received a message from Google stating no further operating system updates would be available for the machine because the model’s processor was obsolete, still working mind you, but nevertheless now a dinosaur.

It has even happened with my Dell desktop system where I have invested in multiple screen displays, two terabytes of external hard drives, and more. Why? Because the newest Windows operating system about to be released is incompatible with my machine’s central processor making it impossible to do the upgrade. This leaves me to ponder how much longer the older Windows operating system will continue to be supported by the company for a hardware investment that is five years old.

I used to think the automobile industry’s annual new model rollouts were the paradigm of planned obsolescence, but no longer are they alone in manipulating consumers to make expensive purchases unnecessarily. Being forced to spend money on technology made incompatible or too expensive to repair by manufacturers is angrifying. Nor should we have to endure the challenges of dealing with washer-dryer stacks where one machine fails and a compatible mate from the same manufacturer no longer exists forcing you to buy two machines rather than one.

What do planned obsolescence and the premature discarding of technology cost society and the planet?

An article appearing on the website Climatalk states that in 2019, electronic waste amounted to 53.6 megatons globally or the equivalent of 7.3 Kilograms (over 16 pounds) per person. That amount was expected to rise to 74.7 megatons or 9.0 kilograms (almost 20 pounds) per person by 2030.

How much of our electronics end up in landfills? How much is repurposed, or recycled? How much material recovery is done from old electronics? And how much of this could be avoided by eliminating outdatedness in manufacturing and by extending the lifetime of the products we buy.

In my search for answers, I leave you with some interesting statistics to contemplate.

• Perceived product ageing has 15% of smartphone buyers replacing perfectly good models in less than 2 years even though manufacturers admit that the products are built to last on average 5.2 years with the lithium battery being the chief longevity delimiter, not the electronics or software.
• 72% of the global warming potential of today’s smartphones stems from their production, transportation, and disposal.
• 17.4% of electronic waste today is collected and recycled meaning the bulk of materials used by manufacturers has to be sourced anew.
• Mining industries produce 25% of global greenhouse gas emissions of which a sizable portion of material output goes into electronics.
• Waste toxicity from discarded electronics is an ongoing problem, in particular lead and mercury which are found in landfills and can leach into groundwater and local surface waters.