To environmentalists’ delight, more and more companies have embraced the practice of Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) with the most significant changes taking place in the information technology industry. A large number of tech companies are beginning to assume greater levels of responsibility for the environmental impacts of their products from the manufacturing process to the product’s ultimate disposal. E-waste recycling has come into vogue but there are still obstacles to its widespread practice.
One of the main obstacles is the sheer vastness of the international e-waste problem. As companies struggle to create new advances, keep up with the competition, and repackage items to appeal to new markets, there continues to be an increased amount of byproduct waste being created. The other main obstacle to practicing effective EPR is the sheer number of items that are being disposed of in order to make room for the new.
According to a recent estimate from the UN, there are as many as 40 million personal computers that become obsolete each year. Added to other products and global sources, the total amount of e-waste could amount to 50 million tonnes a year.
On average, less than 20 per cent of the e-waste is marked for recycling. The other 80 per cent ends up in landfills or relegated to storage. Of the 20 per cent that does make it to the recycling process, 80 per cent gets shipped to developing countries such as China, Vietnam and India and several in Africa, where environmental controls may be less stringent.
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