Back to: SRI Online Training on E-Waste Management

 

 

Module 2.2: Environmental Impacts

Our environment can also be exposed to hazardous substances during WEEE management. This can cause problems but by addressing them, we can keep the environment safe.

Overview of environmental impacts

  • Generation of e-waste does not only impact human health but also the environment.
  • Contaminants released from e-waste are dispersed in the environment through different pathways:

Contaminants transport means

Dust
Air
Biota
Surface water
Soil

Once dispersed, the contaminants will pollute the air, the soil, the water and the ecosystems.

Impacts at the local level

  • Locally WEEE pollution is mainly done through leaching of hazardous substances into water, soil and air
  • Dismantling activities release emissions through different ways (leachates, particles, ashes, fumes, wastewater, solid materials).
  • Those emissions pose serious threat to local environment as they disperse easily in the surroundings.

Impacts at the global level

  • WEEE contaminants also pose serious threat to the global environment. There are 3 main global impacts:

1. Ozone depletion

  • Cooling gases containing CFCs and HCFCs can be found in fridges, freezers and AC equipment. If those gases are released in the atmosphere, they will lead to the destruction of Earth’s protective ozone layer.
  • This represents a threat to both human and animals. Without a protective ozone layer, UV radiation on earth will increase and lead to more skin cancer and other health issues.
  • It is crucial to trap and destroy those gases in a controlled environment.
  • On a more global level, the emission of pollutants also represents a threat for human and the environment. Gases such as CFC and HCFCs, found in cooling appliances, impact the atmosphere and highly participate in global warming. Destruction of the Ozone layer in the atmosphere is a risk to humans, as this will increase the amount of Uvs received on earth which can lead to higher rates of skin cancers.
Removing cooling gases and storing them into a gas bottle while waiting to be treated.

2. Global warming

  • Beside this ozone-depleting effect, these cooling gases (HCFCs and HFCs) also have a powerful global warming potential (GWP), up to 12’000 times stronger than CO2 🡪 release of these substances in the atmosphere leads to accelerating climate change.
  • Once in the atmosphere, the gases absorb heat and gradually warm the lower atmosphere of the Earth. Greenhous gases, once in the atmosphere, will stay there for several years or even decades.
  • Uncontrolled open-burning of WEEE is also an important source of CO2, which directly affects global warming.

3. Resource depletion

  • Mismanagement of WEEE can lead to loss of valuable material resources.
  • Nowadays, the large majority of the EEE devices end up in the waste bin without being recycled. This represents a significant and irrecoverable loss of valuable scarce resources.
  • Dumping WEEE without any resource recovery goes the opposite direction of circular economy.
  • The industry of extraction of raw materials is extremely damaging for the environment (water consumption and quality, mine waste, energy consumption and air emissions). Significant amounts of resource extraction can be avoided with proper recycling of WEEE.

Did you know?

  • At today’s rate of consumption, there are only 30 years left of copper stock, as a raw material.
Recovery of copper from a cable

Waste rock by mining in Canada over the years 1965 to 2010.

This graph shows that waste rock after extraction of copper is very high and increasing with the years. Waste rock is the rock with no economic value of metals, but which is extracted during the mining process. Waste rock has mainly increased so much because of the trend of large-scale open cut mines over the past 60 years. Some metals are also becoming scarcer which means the need of digging out more rock to find metals, which also increases the amount of waste. This graphic shows the trend for different metals.