Overview

E-waste is a generic term for various forms of electric and electronic equipment that has reached its “productive” end. It is also referred to as electronic waste, e-scrap, or Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE). The authors use all these terms interchangeably in this paper.

Just as there is a tremendous market for electronic goods there is a market for its waste. Between 1994 and 2003 an estimated 500 million computers were retired (Matthews et al, 1997). These computers were estimated to have 3billion tonnes of plastics, 700 million tonnes of lead, 1,400 tons of cadmium and 300 tonnes of mercury, most of which is now sitting in landfills. This is before home computers became a personal standard, now it is estimated that there are 315 million personal computers in use, holding in excess of 4 billion pounds of plastics, 1billion pounds of lead and 2 millions pounds of cadmium (Widmer et al., 2005).

These great numbers of computers are a result of an accurate prediction on April 19, 1965 by Gordon Moore. He stated that the processing power in a computer doubles every two years (Audubon, 20??). This rapid depletion in comparative speed coupled with a marketing driven and socially driven want for cutting edge technology have altered the lifespan of a computer. In 1992 the average lifespan of a personal computer was 4 years, in 2005 while the product still works it is considered “obsolete” and have a lifespan of 2 years (National Safety Council, 1999, Widmer et al., 2005).

This market of WEEE is larger than just computers, the two main component of electronic waste is household appliances, known as white goods, which make up 43% and IT equipment, which accounts for 39% (_______,??). White goods predominate value is in the large scrap metal, but as more household appliances have processers in them the mixture value can lean toward the more expensive metals found in their printed circuit boards. These numbers vary depending upon product and will be addressed in more depth in a later section.

WEEE only accounts for 8% of the US waste stream, of this 80% is shipped overseas as e-waste, working products, or parts for products. This remaining 20% of consumer electronics is believed responsible for 40% of the lead in landfills and comprise 70% of the heavy metal contaminates in US landfills (Puckett & Smith, 2002). Not only is there value in not causing this pollution, the potential saving from future cleanup and savings from mining impacts, there is value in that “waste” that is being shipped over seas. A cell phone is made up of 23% metal by weight, worth about $0.60 per cell phone. Multiplying these values for precious metals times the amount of cell phones disposed of in 2006 (130million), One can see a $78million opportunity. This does not stop at cell phones, a ton of e-waste contains 17 times more gold than gold ore and 40 times more copper than copper ore.

The variety of toxic materials and value of reclaimable materials in e-waste make potential recovery not only profitable, but thought measuring the externalities of not, an environmental necessity. While e-waste processing is not a new field, it is still emerging as the infrastructure and habits of consumers are still in the early stages for widespread processing and recycling. On a consumer level, it is currently the fastest growing portion of municipal waste management, 3% to 5% of all waste (8% industrial) (______, ??). While e-waste has potential for refurbishment, resale, and reuse around 80% of WEEE is sent to landfill or incineration, according to Pike Research (2009). Of the remaining 20%, 10% is store or passed along to charities and 13% is reused or recycled (Pike Research, 2009). According to an anonymous source in the State of Oregon E-Cycles program, this 13% is inflated because e-waste is measured by weight and as the highly recycled but larger cathode tube TV’s become less common the recycling rate will fall below 10%. Currently there are is an estimated 35 million tons of e-waste annual with projections of over 60 million tons of e-waste in 2013 (Pike Research, 2009). Pike Research believes that the recycle rate, with government intervention and consumer economic incentives, could reach 50%. At a 45% recovery rate, that would be around 14 million tons of raw materials (Pike Research, 2009), right at 10% of the current virgin mined material according to the USGS. E-waste amounts to a tremendous market in its environmental remediation but also in its material contents.