But less than 20% of the electronics currently used are recycled. This means that a lot of valuable resources are literally being wasted.
Among the components are pieces of silver, copper, gold and steel. Overall, electronic component scrap represented $57 billion-worth of resources in 2019, of which $47 billion-worth was not recycled.
Africa has one of the lowest rates of formal e-waste recycling in the world – only 1% of unused equipment is redirected to recycling plants. But Enviroserv, one of the world’s largest electronics recyclers, sees this as an opportunity.
With e-waste growing globally, the company has built a plant in Dubai that is capable of processing 14 times more e-waste than today. It processes waste from 10 countries in the Middle East and Africa and can recycle up to 98% of the material from electronic components into raw materials, which are then sold to manufacturers in the automotive, IT and construction industries.