In an age when most of us can’t imagine life without technological devices, it comes as a pleasant surprise that a recent Yale study has found that the amount of e-waste generated by Americans has been declining in recent years.
Conducted by researchers at the Yale School of the Environment, the study discovered that, since 2015, the US footprint of electronic waste has shrunk. One of the main contributors to this favorable trend? The disappearance of large, bulky cathode-ray tube (CRT) televisions and computer monitors from American homes.
Among the most interesting implications of the study may be a change in the way we recycle e-waste. Up until now, the main goal of e-waste recycling has been to keep electronics with high levels of lead and mercury out of landfills so they don’t leach into the environment, explained study coauthor Callie Babbitt.
But since such elements are more scarce in today’s electronics, the focus should shift to recovering elements like cobalt (used in traditional batteries) or indium (found in flat-panel displays). These elements aren’t as environmentally toxic. Rather, they are relatively scarce in the Earth’s crust, so failing to capture them for reuse in new electronics is wasteful.
Recapturing more of these critical elements could also help the US avoid geopolitical uncertainties by securing domestic supply, notes study lead author Shahana Althaf. On top of that, instead of extracting these elements from the Earth’s crust, capturing them from e-waste could reduce environmental degradation that’s typically associated with traditional mining.
