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Recycling can be valuable… This is shown by a new United Nations report: Latin America would have lost more than 1 billion dollars for lack of having recovered gold, iron, copper or even aluminum contained in its electronic waste.
Thirteen Latin American countries have been assessed by the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO). The result is a real lost treasure (report available here, in English). A treasure contained in microwaves, cameras, but especially in large household appliances: washing machines, refrigerators or even air conditioners.
For 2019 alone, the electrical and electronic waste generated in the area contained 7 tons of gold, 591,000 tons of iron, 54,000 tons of copper, 91,000 tons of aluminum, 310 kilos of rare earths, for n’ to name just a few, with an estimated value of around $1.7 billion worth of secondary raw materials, according to UNIDO. A real financial windfall that flies away while some of these components are now in high demand.
Costa Rica has the best collection rate of the 13 countries studied
But according to those responsible for the study, more than 97% of electronic waste in the region is neither collected nor sent to appropriate facilities and ends up in a landfill, benefiting an often highly developed informal sector. A dead loss, which is also dangerous: the non-recovery of this waste leaves toxic substances such as mercury, cadmium, or lead in nature.
The problem is that the production of this waste is not decreasing. The countries studied produced 49% more between 2010 and 2019, a rate higher than the world average. Of the 13 countries studied, only five have legislation relating to this specific waste: Bolivia, Chile, Costa Rica, Ecuador and Peru.
Costa Rica has the highest collection rate -8%, followed by Chile -5%. Hence the huge room for improvement to stick to the principle that says that “the best electronic waste there is is that which does not exist”. We are still far from it in Latin America, but in many other regions as well.
