Study: in 2022, more than 5 billion smartphones will be scrapped - a column about 50 thousand kilometers high, or 1/8 the distance to the moon

On International E-Waste Day, the nonprofit organization WEEE (Waste from Electrical and Electronic Equipment) Forum released an interesting report on e-waste this year and in the future.

Here's What We Know

Based on global sales statistics, WEEE analysts have predicted that 5.3 billion smartphones will become e-waste this year. These are old phones that are no longer being used, stored in drawers, closets, garages or tossed in trash cans like regular trash. If we consider the average thickness of a smartphone to be 9 mm, this waste would make a pile almost 50,000 kilometers high. It's also 1/8 the distance between the Earth and the Moon.

Meanwhile, recycling could allow valuable components such as gold, silver, copper, palladium and various parts to be extracted from the gadgets to then make new smartphones out of them. Manufacturing companies are trying to recycle, but their efforts aren't enough: Samsung, for example, last year recycled only 0.0019% of the phones it sold since 2015.

Today, there are a total of about 16 billion phones worldwide. But in Europe alone, nearly one in three devices has long been unused and is just collecting dust. The WEEE predicts that by 2030, some 74 million tons of electronics and electronics will be sent to landfill each year - from washing machines and toasters to tablets and global positioning system (GPS) devices.

Source: Digital Trends