E-waste is a very real thing. Mostly in ways we don’t often think of. Often when we throw something away it goes into the trash. Let’s say a large group of people actually do the right thing and drop it off at a proper e-waste bin. It still needs to be sorted, which takes energy to do that. A lot of that stripping of the materials uses magnets, chemicals, and heat. Often these are also toxic (chemicals) so you have to do something with that. So the issue sort of scales up and in the US, and many other countries, they don’t have the infrastructure to handle e-waste all that well. This isn’t even taking into the account where that energy comes from and how it affects the world.
Batteries are generally what people think of when it comes to electronic waste but there are lots of other materials as well like mercury that also can get into ground water. Thankfully there’s often is a lot of regulation on that but not everyone listens and there’s not exactly police watching and checking what people throw away.
So people throwing away their electronics by themselves does create e-waste but what really causes the big stuff is processing it. There are valuable materials in those electronics that aren’t economically viable for an individual to extract but companies that can get them out to make a profit will often use hazardous ways to get them.
In the long run this is still good because the more ’Proper‘ recycling we do as a civilization the more likely it will get refined and better. Companies like Apple learn that certain materials are harmful so they find new ones to replace them so they are more recyclable.
There are lots of ways to debate this topic and no one agrees on anything really. One thing is for sure that giving people an option to repair can impact e-waste and may likely contribute to a healthy environment. We’ll just have to wait and see.
