4 ms·

The numbers on e-waste per region but adjusted for population (very rough, with rounding errors): Region % Pop Adj -------------------------

The numbers on e-waste per region but adjusted for population (very rough, with rounding errors): Region % Pop Adj --------------------------- Oceania 0.7 0.038 18.4 Europe 12.3 0.741 16.6 Americas 11.3 1.001 11.3 Asia 18.2 4.436 4.1 Africa 2.2 1.216 1.8 Would have been more interesting with the Americas split too.

0xdeafcafe 9y ago
East and West Europe too.
shoo 9y ago
There's more detailed per-country E waste statistics in the "Global E-waste monitor 2017" report, see Annex 3 at the end [1]. Here's per-capita E-waste metrics for a subset of countries that might be interesting (because they produce high levels of per-capita E-waste, or have large populations, or both). I've added a median per-capita income column for reference, from Gallup [2]. Country E-waste Median income kg/inhab. kUSD/inhab. ---------------------------------- Norway 28.5 19.3 UK 24.9 12.4 Denmark 24.8 18.3 Netherlands 23.9 14.5 Australia 23.6 15.0 Germany 22.8 14.1 France 21.3 12.4 Belgium 21.2 10.2 Austria 20.9 12.3 Spain 20.1 7.3 Canada 20.0 15.2 US 19.4 15.5 Japan 16.9 10.8 S. Korea 13.1 11.4 Russia 9.7 4.1 Argentina 8.4 4.1 Mexico 8.2 2.9 Turkey 7.9 2.5 Brazil 7.4 2.2 Thailand 7.4 1.8 S. Africa 5.7 1.2 China 5.2 1.8 Indonesia 4.9 0.5 Philippines 2.8 0.5 Pakistan 1.6 0.5 India 1.5 0.6 Vietnam 1.5 1.1 Bangladesh 0.9 0.6 [1] - https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-D/Climate-Change/Documents/GEM%202017/Global-E-waste%20Monitor%202017%20.pdf https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-D/Climate-Change/Documents/GEM%20... [2] - http://news.gallup.com/poll/166211/worldwide-median-household-income-000.aspx http://news.gallup.com/poll/166211/worldwide-median-househol... Edit: as per the global E waste monitor report, there is a large amount of variability between countries in terms of the rate that e-waste is "collected" versus being disposed of by other methods e.g. in landfill. For example, Norway is at the top of the list in terms of mass of raw e-waste produced per inhabitant, but also has a high e-waste collection rate of 74% . In comparison, Australia only has an e-waste collection rate of 7.5% with the remainder going to landfill. It'd be interesting to know how effective "collection" of waste is after it is produced versus prevention of that waste in the first place. There's a bunch of interesting EU e-waste data here [3]. We can see in [4] that Norway's "recycling rate of e-waste", defined as the "collection rate" multiplied by the "reuse and recycling rate" is 50% . From the above table we know that Norway's collection rate is 74% so the "reuse and recycling rate" must be about 2/3 . But, the "reuse and recyling rate" is "calculated by dividing the weight of the WEEE that enters the recycling/preparing for re-use facility by the weight of total treatment of WEEE" -- i.e. it doesn't appear to measure how efficient the recycling and re-use itself is, in terms of output, it appears to just measures how much loss there is before we get to the recycling / reuse stage. [3] - http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/waste/key-waste-streams/weee http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/waste/key-waste-streams/wee... [4] - http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/tgm/table.do?tab=table&plugin=1&language=en&pcode=t2020_rt130 http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/tgm/table.do?tab=table&plugin=1...
- shoo 9y ago
  Re: efficiency of recycling, there's an interesting paper focusing on the efficiency of precious metals recovery during e-waste recycling: Assessment of Precious Metal Flows During Preprocessing of Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment -- Chancerel, Meskers, Hagelüken, Rotter [1]. Here's my summary of the categorisation by mass of 1000 kg of input e-waste (ignoring the uncertainty quantification in the paper): Category Mass (kg) ------------------------------ Aluminium 22.0 Copper-rich 122.3 Ferrous metals 331.7 Non-Ferrous metals 4.3 Other * 146.4 PCBs 31.6 Plastics 264.8 Precious-metals-rich 52.8 Rubbish, filter dust 24.0 Total 999.9 (*) "Other" includes wood, hazardous materials, etc. This paper focuses on the efficiency of the process in recovering precious metals, which would be of interest from an economic perspective to anyone operating the recycling and recover process: > From the point of view of the process operators, the results of the test can be qualified as “disappointing” because only about a quarter of the gold and palladium and a tenth of the silver are sent to output fractions from which precious metals will be directly recovered. Compared with the recovery rates of major elements such as iron, aluminum, and copper, the recovery rates for precious metals are very low. Most of the precious metals go to the most mass‐relevant fractions (plastics and ferrous metals). These fractions have relatively low concentrations of precious metals (24 g/t of gold and 8 g/t of palladium in the plastics, 24 g/t of gold and 5 g/t of palladium in the ferrous metals; [...] but the considerable mass of the outputs makes the flows of precious metals very relevant. There are of course other ways to measure the efficiency of a recycling process -- you could focus on energy efficiency, resource efficiency, pollution, etc. [1] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1530-9290.2009.00171.x https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1530-9290...

0xdeafcafe 9y ago

East and West Europe too.

shoo 9y ago

There's more detailed per-country E waste statistics in the "Global E-waste monitor 2017" report, see Annex 3 at the end [1]. Here's per-capita E-waste metrics for a subset of countries that might be interesting (because they produce high levels of per-capita E-waste, or have large populations, or both). I've added a median per-capita income column for reference, from Gallup [2]. Country E-waste Median income kg/inhab. kUSD/inhab. ---------------------------------- Norway 28.5 19.3 UK 24.9 12.4 Denmark 24.8 18.3 Netherlands 23.9 14.5 Australia 23.6 15.0 Germany 22.8 14.1 France 21.3 12.4 Belgium 21.2 10.2 Austria 20.9 12.3 Spain 20.1 7.3 Canada 20.0 15.2 US 19.4 15.5 Japan 16.9 10.8 S. Korea 13.1 11.4 Russia 9.7 4.1 Argentina 8.4 4.1 Mexico 8.2 2.9 Turkey 7.9 2.5 Brazil 7.4 2.2 Thailand 7.4 1.8 S. Africa 5.7 1.2 China 5.2 1.8 Indonesia 4.9 0.5 Philippines 2.8 0.5 Pakistan 1.6 0.5 India 1.5 0.6 Vietnam 1.5 1.1 Bangladesh 0.9 0.6 [1] - https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-D/Climate-Change/Documents/GEM%202017/Global-E-waste%20Monitor%202017%20.pdf https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-D/Climate-Change/Documents/GEM%20... [2] - http://news.gallup.com/poll/166211/worldwide-median-household-income-000.aspx http://news.gallup.com/poll/166211/worldwide-median-househol... Edit: as per the global E waste monitor report, there is a large amount of variability between countries in terms of the rate that e-waste is "collected" versus being disposed of by other methods e.g. in landfill. For example, Norway is at the top of the list in terms of mass of raw e-waste produced per inhabitant, but also has a high e-waste collection rate of 74% . In comparison, Australia only has an e-waste collection rate of 7.5% with the remainder going to landfill. It'd be interesting to know how effective "collection" of waste is after it is produced versus prevention of that waste in the first place. There's a bunch of interesting EU e-waste data here [3]. We can see in [4] that Norway's "recycling rate of e-waste", defined as the "collection rate" multiplied by the "reuse and recycling rate" is 50% . From the above table we know that Norway's collection rate is 74% so the "reuse and recycling rate" must be about 2/3 . But, the "reuse and recyling rate" is "calculated by dividing the weight of the WEEE that enters the recycling/preparing for re-use facility by the weight of total treatment of WEEE" -- i.e. it doesn't appear to measure how efficient the recycling and re-use itself is, in terms of output, it appears to just measures how much loss there is before we get to the recycling / reuse stage. [3] - http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/waste/key-waste-streams/weee http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/waste/key-waste-streams/wee... [4] - http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/tgm/table.do?tab=table&plugin=1&language=en&pcode=t2020_rt130 http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/tgm/table.do?tab=table&plugin=1...

shoo 9y ago
Re: efficiency of recycling, there's an interesting paper focusing on the efficiency of precious metals recovery during e-waste recycling: Assessment of Precious Metal Flows During Preprocessing of Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment -- Chancerel, Meskers, Hagelüken, Rotter [1]. Here's my summary of the categorisation by mass of 1000 kg of input e-waste (ignoring the uncertainty quantification in the paper): Category Mass (kg) ------------------------------ Aluminium 22.0 Copper-rich 122.3 Ferrous metals 331.7 Non-Ferrous metals 4.3 Other * 146.4 PCBs 31.6 Plastics 264.8 Precious-metals-rich 52.8 Rubbish, filter dust 24.0 Total 999.9 (*) "Other" includes wood, hazardous materials, etc. This paper focuses on the efficiency of the process in recovering precious metals, which would be of interest from an economic perspective to anyone operating the recycling and recover process: > From the point of view of the process operators, the results of the test can be qualified as “disappointing” because only about a quarter of the gold and palladium and a tenth of the silver are sent to output fractions from which precious metals will be directly recovered. Compared with the recovery rates of major elements such as iron, aluminum, and copper, the recovery rates for precious metals are very low. Most of the precious metals go to the most mass‐relevant fractions (plastics and ferrous metals). These fractions have relatively low concentrations of precious metals (24 g/t of gold and 8 g/t of palladium in the plastics, 24 g/t of gold and 5 g/t of palladium in the ferrous metals; [...] but the considerable mass of the outputs makes the flows of precious metals very relevant. There are of course other ways to measure the efficiency of a recycling process -- you could focus on energy efficiency, resource efficiency, pollution, etc. [1] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1530-9290.2009.00171.x https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1530-9290...