U.N. projects sharp rise in electrical trash

BERLIN - The mountain of refrigerators, cellphones, TV sets and other electrical waste disposed of annually worldwide is forecast to grow by a third by 2017, according to a United Nations study.

E-waste - defined as anything with a battery or a cord - can pose a big problem because it often contains substances that are harmful to humans and the environment if not properly treated. On the other hand, some of it can be profitably recycled.

A U.N. think tank estimated in a Dec. 15 report that the amount of e-waste will rise from almost 53.9 million tons in 2012 to 72.09 million tons in 2017. That’s nearly 200 times the weight of the Empire State Building.

The United States dumped the most last year, generating 10.4 million tons of e-waste, followed by China with 8 million tons.

Per capita, the United States was even further ahead, with almost 66 pounds of high-tech trash compared with China’s 12 pounds. The global average is 15 pounds per person.

But China is catching up, as it had the highest volume of electrical goods put on the market last year with 11.1 million metric tons. The U.S.had about 10 million metric tons.

Taken together, developing and emerging countries already produce as much e-waste as the developed world, said Ruediger Kuehr, who heads the Solving the E-waste Problem secretariat, based at the United Nations University in Bonn, Germany.

The report, which based its findings on estimates of how long such products last and hard data on discarded products in several countries, is the first time that globally comparable data on e-waste have been publicly released, Kuehr said.

Business, Pages 23 on 12/23/2013

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