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Electronic devices must use recycled plastics

Plastics account for about 20% of the 50 million tons of e-waste generated each year, and that number is expected to double to 110 million tons by 2050 !

A UN-backed campaign urges consumers to favor electronic devices that use recycled plastics, a similar solution is promoted by the PolyCE campaign, funded by the European Commission, which also urges manufacturers to use less plastic.

We are drowning in plastic

The amount of e-waste growing every year is huge” – warns Ruediger Kuehr, director of the Sustainable Cycles program at the United Nations University, then adds – “We currently generate about 50 million tons per year worldwide and are expected to reach 110 million tons in 2050 if we do not change our current business and consumption practices“.

Dr. Kuehr explained that currently most plastics in electronic devices are not designed to be recovered or recycled. As a result, it did not end up in landfills. This means that if there were a long line of trucks fully loaded with e-waste plastic, there would be more than 62,000 trucks from Rome to Frankfurt.

The amazing thing about all this is that the recovery rate is so low. We can do much better. One of the factors driving the unprecedented growth of e-waste is the concept of “leapfrog” technology. This may involve parts of the world immediately communicating and working on mobile networks (in some cases directly to 5G). In this way, they skip the extensive and costly infrastructure associated with ground infrastructure.

This means that more than half of the world’s population now has access to the Internet or a cell phone, which tells us that there has been a surge in demand for electronic devices such as laptops, tablets and cell phones. In addition, the period of time after which we replace our devices with a newer model has been steadily decreasing in recent years.

All this raises the annual volume of e-waste.

The health risks associated with unregulated electronic waste sites in the African and Asian regions have been well documented. We also have a good understanding of the risks for those involved in unregulated recycling of e-waste components. For example, mercury poisoning poses a serious threat to those who use soldering irons to release electronic components.

Think less, act more

While awareness of the dangers of plastic waste in general is growing, little or no attention is paid to the impact of plastic waste from millions of disposed electronic devices worldwide.

First and foremost, we want to raise consumer awareness of the benefits of recycled plastics in electronics.” – explained Violeta Nikolova of PolyCE (post-consumer advanced recycled polymers for a closed-loop economy).

We would also like consumers to start thinking more about the components of products, in the same way they look at the appearance or quality of the design,” she told BBC News.

The project’s campaign is expected to run for two years until 2021. While plastics are essential to the manufacture of many different components of electronic and electrical products, industry experts in the PolyCE consortium network have found that products can be designed to facilitate the recovery of plastic materials.

Ms. Nikolova added: “This is the beginning of that conversation. We realize that it will not bring immediate results, but perhaps it would be the beginning of something that will create momentum.”

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