Subj : People send 20 billion pounds of invisible e-waste to landfills e To : All From : PopularScience-Climate-Change Date : Thu Oct 12 2023 23:15:05 People send 20 billion pounds of invisible e-waste to landfills each year Date: Thu, 12 Oct 2023 22:00:00 +0000 Description: Humans annually toss out enough vapes to outweigh six Eiffel Towers. Deposit Photos Experts are sounding the alarm on consumers' propensity to improperly discard items like USB cables, R/C cars, and vapes. The post People send 20 billion pounds of invisible e-waste to landfills each year appeared first on Popular Science . FULL STORY ====================================================================== Humans annually toss out enough vapes to outweigh six Eiffel Towers. Deposit Photos One e-toy for every person on Earththats the staggering amount of electric trains, drones , talking dolls, R/C cars, and other childrens gadgets tossed into landfills every year. Some of what most consumers consider to be e-wastelike electronics such as computers, smartphones, TVs, and speaker systemsare usual suspects. Others, like power tools, vapes , LED accessories, USB cables, anything involving rechargeable lithium batteries and countless other similar, nontraditional e-waste materials , are less obviously in need of special disposal. In all, people across the world throw out roughly 9 billion kilograms (19.8 billion pounds) of e-waste commonly not recognized as such by consumers. This invisible e-waste is the focal point of the sixth annual International E-Waste Day on October 14, organized by Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Forum . In anticipation of the event, the organization recently commissioned the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) to delve into just how much unconventional e-waste is discarded every yearand global population numbers are just some of the ways to visualize the issue. [Related: People will throw away about 5.3 billion phones this year .] According to UNITARs findings, for example, the total weight of all e-cig vapes thrown away every year roughly equals 6 Eiffel Towers . Meanwhile, the total weight of all invisible e-waste tallies up to almost half a million 40 [metric ton] trucks, enough to create a bumper-to-bumper traffic jam stretching approximately 3,504 milesthe distance between Rome and Nairobi. From a purely economic standpoint, nearly $10 billion in essential raw materials is literally thrown into the garbage every year. People tend to recognise household electrical products as those they plug in and use regularly. But many people are confused about the waste category into which ancillary, peripheral, specialist, hobby, and leisure products fit and how to have them recycled, Pascal Leroy, Director-General of the WEEE Forum, said in a statement ahead of International E-Waste Day. The WEEE Forum asks that instead of trashing the e-waste, consumers bring it to the appropriate municipal collection facility in their area. Leroys organization states e-waste is the worlds fastest-growing waste stream, and to deal with it properly, many more people need to recognize these invisible examples. A significant amount of electronic waste is hidden in plain sight, says WEEE Forum member, Magdalena Charytanowicz, via the announcement . Sadly, invisible e-waste often falls under the recycling radar of those disposing of them because they are not seen as e-waste. We need to change that and raising awareness is a large part of the answer. Charytanowicz cites past informational campaigns that successfully raised awareness about the many issues surrounding plastic pollution , and points to the UNs treaty on plastics due next year. We hope the same will occur in the e-waste field, she adds. The post People send 20 billion pounds of invisible e-waste to landfills each year appeared first on Popular Science . Articles may contain affiliate links which enable us to share in the revenue of any purchases made. ====================================================================== Link to news story: https://www.popsci.com/technology/invisible-e-waste-pollution/ --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 (Linux/64) * Origin: tqwNet Science News (1337:1/100) .