We're constantly being encouraged to update and upgrade our tech, dumping our older but still functioning products in the process. Outlets pushing fast fashion having us taking the same approach with our clothes, and with excessive grocery shopping we are biting off, or at least buying, more than we can chew. All these discarded products have to go somewhere and a lot goes to landfill. Click or scroll through to discover the financial and environmental cost of our modern throwaway culture.
Our constantly evolving technology is one of the defining qualities of our generation, but it also means that its cast-offs are becoming a poignant feature in landfill sites all over the world. There is currently 50 million tonnes of electronic and electrical waste – known as e-waste –on our planet, which has a total weight of more than every commercial airliner ever produced. Shockingly, only 20% of that is formally recycled.
But there is "gold in them there" landfill sites. Quite literally. Electrical items such as smartphones and computers have gold in their motherboards, which can be stripped out and sold. A UN report from 2019 estimates that up to 7% of the world’s gold could be sat in landfill right now. In fact, there is 100 times more gold to be found in a tonne of cell phones than a tonne of gold ore.
Gone are the days of big box television sets taking up most of the living room. But that does mean that the outdated sets have to find somewhere else to live, with 25 million TVs being thrown out every year in the US. While older models are particularly difficult to recycle thanks to their lead-filled cathode-ray tubes, dumping newer LCD and plasma screens also poses problems as a result of the toxic chemicals that make up their parts.
Like old TVs, unwanted computers and laptops are a ubiquitous presence at most landfill sites – approximately 300 million PCs are produced annually, continually pushing older models out of use. Lead and arsenic are among the harmful substances that keep the machines’ circuit boards running and they're also one of the reasons why tossing out old computers can be so harmful to both people and the environment.
Cell phones might be smaller than PCs, but they’re just as big an issue when it comes to e-waste that’s blocking up landfill sites as PCs. As many as 350,000 cell phones are thrown out every single day according to the US Environmental Protection Agency, which is unsurprising given that the typical mobile user gets the option to upgrade their model every 24 months.
Domestic appliances are another form of e-waste. From kettles and toasters to heavy white goods, our old electricals are littering the planet. Outdated refrigerators are particularly infamous for the impact that they have on the environment, and it’s not just the space that they’re taking up in landfill. Chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, used to be the most commonly used coolants in the appliances, but they were banned in 1996 after scientists found that the greenhouse gas was tearing holes in the ozone layer.
Having mountains of e-waste stacking up in landfill isn’t only an eyesore, it’s also extremely hazardous owing to the lethal cocktail of chemicals that goes into making most devices and appliances. Toxic substances found in gadgets include lead, arsenic and mercury, and without proper disposal they can leak into the surrounding soil, contaminating the land and nearby groundwater. Once the toxins are in the water, there's not a lot to stop them from making their way through the water system and eventually even onto people's plates.
Although it's an illegal practice in many countries, e-waste is often clandestinely exported from Western countries and dumped in developing countries around the world. In fact, only a relatively small proportion of e-waste is dealt with properly. Guiyu in southern China was dubbed "the e-waste capital of the world", but in 2018 the country decided that the long-term environmental impact wasn’t worth the short-term financial gain. Since then, other Asian countries like Thailand, Laos and Cambodia have taken China’s place as other countries continue to ship their waste abroad instead of dealing with it themselves.
Mountains upon mountains of e-waste are transported to colossal landfill sites like Agbogbloshie near Ghana's capital Accra. The area is an enormous 20 acres of rubbish and it is the workplace of around 10,000 locals who scavenge for parts that can be salvaged. They burn whatever they can’t make money from, at detrimental cost to their health and wellbeing.
But it's not all bad news, as many tech companies have sophisticated recycling procedures in place. In 2018, Apple launched recycling robot Daisy. She can dissemble 1.2 million devices in a year so that their parts can be recycled, diverting 48,000 tonnes of waste from landfill annually. In the same year, Microsoft managed to recycle 1,700 tonnes of its e-waste, while Samsung has set itself the goal of taking back 7.5 million tonnes of its products once they’re not in use so that they can be refurbished or recycled.
By trading your product in or selling it to a recycling firm chances are it will be refurbished and sold on in the thriving secondhand market in Africa, Asia or Latin America. Reconditioned products are growing in popularity in the Western world too, as the high standard of refurbishments tends to mean that you’ll be paying a fraction of the price for a next-to-new product.
Affordable fashion is everywhere these days and paired with the fact that stores regularly bring out new lines, it has bred a fast fashion culture that has us constantly buying and then ditching our clothes. In the UK alone, 300,000 tonnes of textiles ended up in landfill in 2018, that's the equivalent of a whopping £12.5 billion ($14.3bn) worth of clothing going in the bin in one year.
In terms of clothing, the good news is that half of what is thrown out in the West then goes on to be sold in the global second hand market. In fact in the US the market for used clothes was worth $24 billion in 2018, not far off the fast fashion market which was worth $35 billion, and it has been predicted to overtake fast fashion by 2028 according to research by GlobalData.
Unwanted clothing is a big business to be in, and it’s been estimated that 80% of people in Africa wear secondhand garments. It isn’t without its controversies however, and some countries in the continent have considered banning the importing of secondhand clothes from the West on various ethical bases, as well as the fact that it isn’t always fitting for local dress sense.
A lot of people choose to donate their old clothes to charity to reduce waste. However, the amount of old clothing that ends up in landfill has increased by 10% since 2014 according to a report by WRAP, and the non-profit suggests that this is because people don’t always trust that their clothes will go to a good cause. Stories of fake charities and stolen collections have harmed what would otherwise be a great way to prevent items from ending up in the trash, as the fear of scammers making profit from their donations has led some people to throw their old clothes away instead.
The tonnes of clothing ending up in landfill aren’t just taking up space and contributing to the sprawling piles of waste. The very slow decomposition of garments pollutes the air around the site, gradually releasing more and more methane into the atmosphere. The dyes and other chemicals that go into synthetic fabrics also impact the ground below, as they trickle into the soil and eventually make their way into the groundwater.
Between 33% and 50% of food in the world is never eaten, according to food waste prevention app Olio. That comes to a tremendous $1 trillion (£863bn)-worth of food that goes straight into the bin. The compulsion to buy more food than we need has many implications, from the money we’re chucking away to the impact the uneaten food has on the world around us...
Food waste represents an enormous 1.3% of the total US GDP as it ranks at the top country in the world for wasting food, according to ReFED. The average American family spends $2,275 (£1,972) a year on food that ends up in landfill and over in the UK 22% of the weekly groceries shop gets binned on average.
One in nine people don’t have enough food, according to the World Food Programme, and around 3.1 million children die each year as a result of malnutrition. Statistics like these make it all the more upsetting that those who do have sufficient food supplies are wasting such large quantities of it. The need to solve the food waste crisis is starting to be addressed on a small scale however, with apps such as Olio and America's ReFED which encourage people and restaurants to give away their unwanted food.
It may seem like food waste isn’t that bad for the environment as they can biodegrade, and it’s true that unused vegetables and stale bread have a smaller impact on the atmosphere than chemically treated jeans or a lead-filled computer screen. That said, food that does end up in landfill isn’t able to compost due to the lack of oxygen, meaning that it produces large amounts of methane. A lot of energy and resource also goes into getting the food to you – the land, water, and packaging, for example – that also go to waste if the food isn’t actually consumed.
As well as using food waste apps, there are plenty of other methods recommended by the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation. Buying ugly or ‘wonky’ fruit and vegetables and sticking to weekly shopping lists are consumer habits suggested by the organisation, and ensuring refrigerators are working well and using leftovers are good ways to cut down food waste when you’re at home.
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