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E-waste levels are surging in Asia
If you thought our throwaway gadget culture was already having a nasty effect on the environment, watch out... it's getting considerably worse. A United Nations University study has revealed that the volume of e-waste in East and Southeast Asia surged 63 percent between 2010 and 2015, reaching 12.3 million tonnes. Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and mainland China were unsurprisingly the largest local generators. But why the rapid spike?
US creates the most e-waste, cellphones top the heap
We've known for years about the growing volume of electronic waste, but a new UN study suggests that the situation is only getting worse -- and that the US is largely to blame. The organization says that Americans created the most e-waste in 2012, at 9.4 million metric tons. The country produced no more than 2.2 million tons in 2005. China was the runner-up at 7.2 million tons, but it also has a much larger population; researches estimate that the US generated nearly 30 tons of waste per person versus just 5.4 in China. As to why Americans have so much tech junk? Most likely, it stems from an obsession with cellphones. A simultaneous study from MIT and the US National Center for Electronics Recycling shows that handsets represented 120 million of the 258.2 million used electronic devices in the US during 2010, and that ratio likely isn't getting any smaller. Whatever the cause, developing countries have to bear the brunt of our e-waste; MIT notes that most used gadgets leaving the US are going to China and Latin America. And that's only counting trackable shipments -- both the UN and MIT believe that there are many gaps in their data, which hints that the problem is considerably worse. [Image credit: Curtis Palmer, Flickr]
