Follow for more talkers

More than 5 BILLION phones will be thrown away in 2022

If stacked on top of each other they'd reach an eighth of the way to the moon.

Avatar photo

Published

on
They found that 8,775 households across six countries owned an average of 74 electrical products each. (SWNS)

By Alice Clifford via SWNS

More than five billion phones will be thrown away in 2022 - more than enough to stretch all the way around the equator, according to a new report.

If stacked flat on top of each other the discarded phones would make a tower over 30,000 miles tall - 120 times higher than the orbit of the International Space Station, and reaching an eighth of the way to the moon.

Research, conducted from June to September by members of the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Forum (WEEE), found that 8,775 households across six countries owned an average of 74 electrical products.

These included phones, tablets, laptops, electric tools, hair dryers and toasters.

Of these 74, on average 13 were being hoarded, nine of them were left unused and four of them were broken.

The countries surveyed were the Netherlands, UK, Slovenia, Romania, Portugal and Lebanon.

Magdalena Charytanowicz, from the WEEE Forum, who is in charge of International E-Waste Day, said: "Small EEE items such as cell phones, electric toothbrushes, toasters and cameras produced worldwide will weigh an estimated total of 24.5 million tonnes – four times the weight of the Great Pyramid of Giza.

"And these small items make up a significant proportion of the eight percent of all E-waste thrown into trash bins and eventually landfilled or incinerated.

“These devices offer many important resources that can be used in the production of new electronic devices or other equipment, such as wind turbines, electric car batteries or solar panels – all crucial for the green, digital transition to low-carbon societies.”

The survey found that phones were the fourth most hoarded item despite being made of valuable recyclable materials such as gold, copper, silver and palladium.

The total global stock of mobile phones, both in use and hoarded, is around 16 billion, which is approximately two phones per person.

via GIPHY

The reasons for hoarding these items varied. Of those surveyed, 46 percent of people said that they thought they may use them again in the future, 15 percent said they planned on selling them or giving them away, and 13 percent said they had sentimental value.

A further nine percent said they thought the item may have future value and finally seven percent didn't know how to dispose of them.

This issue is the focus of WWWE's fifth annual international E-Waste Day.

The team aims to encourage people to stop throwing out and hoarding their small electrical items and recycle them instead.

Pascal Leroy, director general of the WEEE Forum, said: “We focused this year on small E-waste items because it is very easy for them to accumulate unused and unnoticed in households, or to be tossed into the ordinary garbage bin.

"People tend not to realize that all these seemingly insignificant items have a lot of value, and together at a global level represent massive volumes.

“The producer responsibility organizations in the WEEE Forum that manage the collection of e-waste are constantly working to make the proper disposal of small E-waste simple and convenient for users and households."

He added: “Providing collection boxes in supermarkets, pick up of small broken appliances upon delivery of new ones and offering PO Boxes to return small E-waste are just some of the initiatives introduced to encourage the return of these items.”

Virginijus Sinkevičius (CORR), European Commissioner for the Environment, Oceans and Fisheries, commented: “The continuing growth in the production, consumption and disposal of electronic devices have huge environmental and climate impacts.

"The European Commission is addressing those with proposals and measures throughout the whole product life-cycle, starting from design until collection and proper treatment when electronics become waste.

“Preventing waste and recovering important raw materials from E-waste is crucial to avoid putting more strain on the world’s resources."

"Only by establishing a circular economy for electronics, the EU will continue to lead in the efforts to urgently address the fast-growing problem of E-waste.”

In the past 20 years, the WEEE Forum has collected, de-polluted, recycled or prepared for re-use of more than 30 million tonnes of electrical items.

Dr. Kees Baldé, a senior scientific specialist at UNITAR SCYCLE, and a lead researcher behind the Global E-Waste Monitor, said: "Many small electronic products such as disposable airplane earbuds or cables and adapters accumulate largely unnoticed in many households.

"All the defunct earbuds accumulated by 2026 strung together would stretch around the moon three times.

“Over the past decade the growth in generated E-waste has been considerably higher than the growth in recycling, thus it is important to remind people of the importance of reusing or returning every single piece of electronics or electrical product that is forgotten about in household drawers.”

Last year over 170 organizations from 78 countries worldwide supported the fourth International E-Waste Day.

This year, the WEEE Forum invited all organizations involved in effective and responsible E-waste management to plan awareness-raising activities for 14 October.

These activities could be social media, TV or radio campaigns, city or school E-waste collections, or even artistic performances.

The UN Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) has launched a self-paced E-waste online training course that is open to anyone who wants to get involved.

The course, which goes live on 14 October, will take around 1.5 hours and will offer lectures, videos, illustrations, tests and a final exam.

Dr. Ruediger Kuehr (CORRECT), founder of the SCYCLE Programme and head of UNITAR’s Office in Bonn, said: “International E-waste Day reminds us annually of the avalanche of problems we face unless we take appropriate measures, without which global e-waste could double to 100 million tonnes or more in the next 30 years.

"Consumption of electronics in many countries continues to grow, with more and more gadgets and products or embedded in such as furniture, clothes and toys, all of which eventually become e-waste.

“We need to understand this growth and counter it with everyone involved: national authorities, enforcement agencies, Producer Responsibility Organizations, original equipment manufacturers, recyclers, researchers and consumers themselves."

Stories and infographics by ‘Talker Research’ are available to download & ready to use. Stories and videos by ‘Talker News’ are managed by SWNS. To license content for editorial or commercial use and to see the full scope of SWNS content, please email [email protected] or submit an inquiry via our contact form.

Top Talkers