♻️ The Rising Tide of E-Waste and the Recycling Imperative

Between 2020 and 2024, electronic waste generated in the country rose from 46,211 to 53,559 metric tonnes—a staggering 15.9% increase in just four years. This rise, propelled by rapid digital adoption, is a paradox of progress: while mobile money, smartphones, and smart appliances have improved lives, their end-of-life handling presents a growing environmental and public health crisis.

The most significant contributors? Small equipment—such as toasters, kettles, shavers, toys, and personal gadgets—and temperature exchange or cooling devices like refrigerators and air conditioners, which together made up over half of all e-waste in 2024. Equally worrying is the uptick in discarded screens and monitors, not just bulky but laced with toxic materials that require specialized recycling.

What’s Filling the Scrap Heap? - 2024

The 2024 breakdown offers a granular view of the scale and diversity of electronic waste. Small electrical and electronic equipment led by a wide margin, accounting for 19,737 metric tonnes. This category includes household and personal devices such as microwaves, electric kettles, video cameras, electronic toys, and small tools—products often cheap, ubiquitous, and disposed of without repair.

let's explore this in a chart

Key Highlights:

1. Cooling and freezing equipment—including refrigerators, freezers, air conditioners, and heat pumps—generated 11,003 tonnes of waste, posing major environmental threats due to the presence of refrigerants harmful to the atmosphere.

2. Information and communication technology (ICT) equipment, such as mobile phones, GPS units, routers, personal computers, and printers, added another 6,581 tonnes, while screens and monitors—televisions, laptops, and tablets—contributed 5,715 tonnes, often containing cadmium, mercury, and lead.

3. Large appliances like washing machines, dishwashers, ovens, and photovoltaic panels made up 5,680 tonnes, and lighting devices such as fluorescent tubes, LED lamps, and high-intensity discharge lights comprised 4,844 tonnes, small in volume but disproportionately hazardous due to mercury content.

This category-level distribution underscores a critical truth: e-waste is not a singular problem, but a fragmented one, with each class of device requiring distinct handling, recovery processes, and policy attention.

The High Cost of Convenience

The risks posed by unmanaged e-waste are manifold. Many of these devices contain hazardous substances—mercury in lamps, lead and cadmium in screens, flammable lithium-ion batteries, and ozone-depleting refrigerants in cooling systems. When discarded improperly—burned, buried, or stripped in informal scrapyards—these materials leach into water sources, poison ecosystems, and endanger human health.

Ironically, much of this waste is economically valuable. From copper wiring and gold traces in smartphones to aluminium and rare earths in laptops and modems, electronic waste often yields more valuable metals per tonne than raw ore. The problem is not what’s in the waste—it’s the lack of a national ecosystem to recover it.

Recycling the Right Way

Addressing the e-waste crisis requires a comprehensive national strategy:

1. Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR): Manufacturers and importers must be required to collect and safely process a percentage of the products they put on the market.

2. Consumer Incentives: Programs such as trade-in discounts, airtime rewards, or disposal credits can nudge users to return devices instead of dumping them.

3. Formalizing the Informal Sector: Thousands of waste pickers operate outside the regulatory framework. With proper training and safety gear, they could be integrated into formal e-waste recycling chains, multiplying safe recovery rates.

4. Public Education: Just as people now sort plastics and organics, there must be widespread awareness about why and how to recycle electronics—from school curricula to digital campaigns embedded in mobile platforms.

   
   

Not Just Trash, But Opportunity

Recycling e-waste is not just about preventing harm—it’s about unlocking opportunity. With the right infrastructure, it can create green jobs, reduce reliance on imported raw materials, and provide inputs for local manufacturing. It can also help manage data security, by ensuring sensitive devices like phones and laptops are wiped and destroyed responsibly.

The surge in electronic waste is an inevitable byproduct of digital transformation—but it need not become a legacy of environmental damage. If stakeholders across industry, government, and civil society act now, the country can turn its rising tide of e-waste into a model for sustainable digital development.