The cost of waste: e-junk and emerging tech add to America’s pollution prob

Electronic landfill… Even as people and corporations try to shrink their carbon footprints, waste is piling up. A recent UN report said that a record 62M tons of electronic waste (think: microwaves, vapes, cellphones) was produced in 2022. E-waste often contains toxic chemicals, which can be released into the environment with greenhouse-gas emissions. While some US states and retailers, like Staples and Best Buy, offer e-waste recycling options, mass consumption has caused e-waste to rise 5x faster than it can be recycled.

New players… While the world slowly adopts renewable-energy sources like solar panels and wind power to lower emissions, emerging technologies are countering progress. Energy-intensive industries like bitcoin mining and AI computing require tons of electricity. And in the US electricity is mostly generated through natural gas. Last year, crypto miners used up to 2% of all US electricity (the same as the state of Utah). Meantime, training a single AI model can emit over 284 tons of CO2, or the lifetime emissions of five average American cars. AI’s carbon footprint is nearing 1% of annual global emissions.

The forecast… Global e-waste is expected to grow another 30% by 2030. Crypto’s total electric demand could jump a further 40% by 2026, and the US gov’t said it’d start tracking crypto miners’ energy use more closely. Recent research suggested that by 2027, AI servers could annually use as much electricity as Argentina. And by 2026, AI and crypto mining could double data-center energy use.