Experts urge Nigerians to stop trashing electronic waste with ordinary garbage

To mark International E-Waste Day, October 14, consumers worldwide are urged to collect dead and/or unused electronics and electrical products and give them a second life through reuse or repair, or recycle them properly.

Above all, consumers should stop throwing them away in household waste bins.

The Global E-waste Monitor 2024, authored by UNITAR in cooperation with ITU, reported almost a quarter of end-of-life electronic waste ends up in home trash, squandering billions of dollars worth of copper, gold, and other precious metals, materials critical to the production of such products, along with valuable plastics, and glass.

The 14 million tonnes of e-waste (dead or unused products with a battery or plug) discarded with ordinary household waste works out to the weight of ~24,000 of the world’s heaviest passenger aircraft – enough to form an unbroken queue of giant planes from London to Helsinki, NY to Miami, Cairo to Tripoli, or Bangkok to Calcutta.

Pascal Leroy, Director General of the Brussels-based Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Forum, in a statement sent to Nigerian Tribune, stated that: “Small electronic and electrical goods such as mobile phones, toys, remote controls, game consoles, headphones, lamps, screens and monitors, heating and cooling equipment, and chargers are everywhere. And electronic components embedded in consumer products large and small – even clothing – are now omnipresent. The 844 million e-cigarettes thrown away in 2022 alone contained enough lithium, for example, to power 15,000 electric cars.”

Magdalena Charytanowicz of the WEEE Forum in charge of International E-Waste Day, added that: “We know what to do, and we can do better.”

She stated that the place to start is the junk drawer, a common feature of homes around the world.

Globally, there are 108 mobile phone subscriptions per 100 people. Earlier surveys have shown that European households alone store about 700 million unused or non-functioning mobile phones – an average of more than two per household.

Charytanowicz added; “Hoarding is an issue predominantly in wealthier countries. Elsewhere, reasons for keeping appliances are often personal data concerns or a desire to recover some of their value.”