The battle to dispose of electronic equipment
The UAE is addressing the global problem of discarded electronic devices and the pollution they cause. Jonathan Gornall reports on the challenges
We’ve all done it – binned a tablet with a cracked screen, ditched a sluggish iPhone in favour of the latest model or tossed out a TV rendered redundant by the promise of a sharper picture.
But while we are becoming much better at recycling paper, glass and plastic, our fast-moving digital culture is creating a global epidemic of domestic electronic waste that too few governments are addressing.
A recent study by the UN says 44.7 million tonnes of “e-waste” was produced across the world in 2016. That is the equivalent of 4,500 Eiffel Towers. And it is only going to get worse. The Global E-waste Monitor 2017, a report by three UN bodies, says that in 2014 each person on the planet was responsible for the equivalent of 5.8 kilograms of e-waste.
By 2016 that had increased to 6.1kg and by 2021 it is forecast to reach 6.8kg for a total of 52.2 million tonnes (or 5,200 Eiffel Towers).
The UN says that the “improper and unsafe treatment and disposal” of e-waste “through open burning or in dumpsites poses significant risks to the environment and human health”, and “presents challenges” to the achievement of the world body’s Sustainable Development Goals.
“The growth in electronic waste kind of came up and bit us from behind,” says Stuart Fleming, chief executive of Enviroserve UAE, which is about to open “the world’s largest integrated e-waste and specialised waste recycling facility” in Dubai Industrial City.
“The thousands of tonnes of e-waste in landfills throughout the world, dumped throughout the 1980s and ’90s, must be amazing.”
Vanessa Gray, one of the report’s authors, agrees that while we have been busy with the recycling of paper, glass and plastic, the issue of e-waste has crept up largely unnoticed. But Ms Gray says now is the time for people, companies and governments to act.
“There are more computers, smartphones, data centres and networks, and the amount of electronic waste is really growing,” she says.
The UN report, published in December, says that “disposable incomes in many developing countries are increasing and a growing global middle class is able to spend more on electrical and electronic equipment”.
“It is great that the information society is growing, giving access to more information to more people,” Ms Gray says. “But it also creates a lot more electrical and electronic equipment and more e-waste.
“Consumers have an important role because we cannot continue to consume like we are at the moment, not using things until the end of their lives, throwing them away and not recycling them properly.”
The report also points a finger at the sales and marketing ploys adopted by technology companies. Many people, it says, own more than one information and communications device, “and replacement cycles for mobile phones and computers, and for other devices and equipment, are becoming shorter”.
If this sounds counterintuitive, it is – improving technology should increase the lifespan of devices, not reduce it. But as users of a range of products have discovered to their cost, built-in obsolescence is a cynical reality of the modern electronics industry.
In December Apple admitted that its regular software updates slowed down the performance of older iPhones, and the company is now being investigated by the consumer protection agency in France, where built-in obsolescence to generate sales is a criminal offence.
The e-waste report is by the UN University, its agency the International Telecommunication Union, and the non-profit International Solid Waste Association.
It singles out the UAE as having “one of the world’s lowest life expectancy of electronics and high amounts of consumption, making the country produce substantial amounts of electronic waste annually”.
But on the surface, this seems a harsh verdict. The volume of e-waste generated by each person in the country compares favourably with the world’s 10 worst performers, a table dominated by nine European countries and Australia.
The report says that in 2016, the UAE produced 13.6kg of e-waste a person, compared with 28.5kg in Norway, the nation in the No 1 slot. The UK, with 24.9kg, was second worst, followed by Denmark (24.8kg) and The Netherlands (23.9kg).
The UAE also performs better than all but one of its fellow GCC members. The worst offender in the region is Saudi Arabia, which generated 15.9kg of e-waste a person in 2016 – still relatively low compared with many European countries.
It was followed by Kuwait (15.8kg), Bahrain (15.5kg) and Oman (14.9kg).
The UAE’s output per person (13.6kg) is bettered only by that of Qatar (11.3kg). But there are two significant limits with these figures, which suggest the situation in the UAE and the Gulf region may be worse than it appears.
Only 41 countries could provide the authors with firm data about the amount of e-waste generated. None of the Gulf states was among them. So the volume of e-waste was estimated based on data from those nations that did submit records.
“We found a strong connection between the amount of disposable income people
A recent study by the UN says 44.7 million tonnes of e-waste was produced across the world in 2016
have and the amount of electronic and electrical goods they will buy, and therefore, the amount of e-waste produced,” says Ms Gray, an expert with the UN’s International Telecommunication Union.
The report’s estimates are, she says, “relatively good, although of course we would much prefer countries to provide these data”.
Ms Gray says one of the objectives of the report is to persuade more countries to collect this information.
“This is really the first step to addressing the challenge, because if a country doesn’t know how much e-waste it has it can’t start producing relevant policies,” she says.
The figure for the amount of e-waste produced by each person in the UAE is also based on a total population of about 9.8 million. But workers from countries such as India and Pakistan account for more than half of this number.
Given that they earn far less than Emiratis or people from western countries, and that the vast majority will be sending home most of their salary, it is reasonable to suggest that only half of them is likely to have sufficient disposable income to be in the market for advanced electronics.
If so, the UAE’s output for each person is likely to be at least double that in the report – more than 27kg. In that case, the UAE would be threatening Norway’s position as the nation with the highest per-capita production of e-waste.
But the report also singles out the UAE for praise over its plans, nearing completion, to set up the region’s first dedicated e-waste recycling plant. This, says Ms Gray, “is a very important and very good step”.
“Today, 66 per cent of the world’s population is covered by e-waste legislation but only 20 per cent of e-waste is being properly recycled,” she says. “So while legislation is one of the necessary steps, we need to go beyond that and implement change. We have to have these recycling plants.”
She says investing in such plants is not viable for small countries but they can export e-waste to countries that do have them, and that means that “this recycling plant in Dubai is great not just for the UAE, but for the whole region”.
The plant puts the UAE in the vanguard of the battle against environmental harm. Last week the government of Hong Kong, whose population of 7.4 million people each produced 19kg of e-waste in 2016, opened a US$54m (Dh198.3m) e-waste recycling plant.
Enviroserve UAE’s recycling collection lorries are already familiar in the emirate. With dismantling plants and agreements in countries including its GCC neighbours, and Georgia, South Africa, Rwanda, Kenya, Angola, Nigeria and Egypt, its Dubai plant will handle e-waste from a large part of the Middle East and Africa.
Stuart Fleming, its chief executive, says construction of the Dh120m plant in Dubai Industrial City is almost complete and installation of equipment is imminent.
Mr Fleming says the company will move into the plant in April, with an official opening in September.
Funding for the plant has come through the Swiss government’s export finance agency, “which makes this the largest foreign direct investment in the environment in the UAE”.
When fully operational, the plant will have a capacity of 39,000 tonnes of e-waste a year be able to handle 60,000 tonnes of other waste, ranging from expired products such as shampoos to car parts.
The company has rejected chemical and high-pressure water techniques as environmentally unfriendly, deciding on a technology that combines shredding and pulping with magnets and air pressure to separate and extract steel, iron, copper, zinc, nickel, gold and silver and precious metals.
The UN report estimates that the global value of all raw materials in e-waste in 2016 was €55 billion (Dh250bn) – more than the GDP of many countries.