Sad Facts on Technotrash or E-waste

The terms “technotrash” and “e-waste” are catch-all terms for the huge amounts of trash created when we discard electronics.

• We discard 20 to 50 million tons of technotrash worldwide every year, which amounts to about 5% of all solid waste.

• The U.S. produced 6.92 million tons of technotrash in 2019.

• Around the world, e-waste grew by 21 percent between 2014 and 2019.

• Americans discard more than 400,000 cell phones each day.

• Only 13% of all discarded electronics are recycled.

 --Liz Soltan