E-waste—Study of Environmental Impacts and Waste Management Practices

Technologica1 advancements have brought forward a massive use of electronic devices especially smartphones and laptops. Over 300 million consumer electronic devices become obsolete each year, and this is only in the United States of America. E-waste output is expected to reach 20–25 million tonnes per year globally. Many governments have been driven to develop and adopt ecologically sound management techniques and collection systems for E-waste management in order to avoid environmental damage and increase re-use, recovery, and recycling of valuable materials as a result of the e-waste crisis. This first section of this paper gives the reader an overview of the topic e-waste. The first section will look at the definition of e-waste, what it is composed of and how much is generated in different countries. The second part will cover the health hazards and the environmental impacts of electronic waste. It looks at the effects of heavy metals found in electronic waste, how they reach the soil, plants, water bodies, seafood and into the human bodies. The health effects of these metals are also discussed. Finally, the third part discusses the management practices put by a few countries and multinational companies to reduce e-waste in our environment.