# E-Waste E-waste is the discarded-electronics waste stream — dead phones, laptops, TVs, appliances, batteries, and cables. It is the fastest-growing category of household waste in the world (on the order of 60+ million tonnes a year), and only a minority is formally recycled. The rest is landfilled or, very often, exported to the Global South, where it is dismantled and burned in informal scrapyards to recover metals — releasing lead, mercury, cadmium, and dioxins, and exposing workers (frequently including children) to severe contamination. Agbogbloshie in Ghana and Guiyu in China became the emblematic dumping sites. ## Why it matters here E-waste is where the device lifecycle's hidden costs land, and it ties together several of the vault's threads with a clear environmental-justice dimension. **The closed loop with obsolescence and repair.** The faster devices are discarded, the more e-waste — so [[Planned Obsolescence]] and the suppression of [[Right to Repair]] are upstream causes, and extending device lifespan is the most direct mitigation. This is the environmental leg of the repair coalition's argument. **Wasted critical minerals.** E-waste contains the same [[Rare Earth Elements]], [[Conflict Minerals]], and battery metals ([[Lithium-Ion Battery]]) that the [[Supply Chain]] fights are about. "Urban mining" — recovering these from waste — is both an environmental opportunity and a strategic one, since recycling could reduce dependence on Chinese-controlled supply. The same material is a toxin in a Ghanaian scrapyard and a strategic asset in a policy memo. **The export dimension.** Wealthy countries exporting their toxic waste to poorer ones is a recurring environmental-justice and trade story, governed (loosely) by the Basel Convention, which the US notably never fully ratified. It sits adjacent to the broader pattern of externalizing costs onto the Global South that the vault tracks in supply-chain and labor contexts. ## See Also - [[Planned Obsolescence]] · [[Right to Repair]] — the upstream causes and the main lever against them - [[Lithium-Ion Battery]] — the hazardous, fire-prone fraction - [[Conflict Minerals]] · [[Rare Earth Elements]] — the materials lost to the waste stream - [[Refurbished]] — reuse as waste prevention