Report catalogues “toxic legacy” of global e-waste

European nations came top of the rubbish pile in a global charting of electronic waste complied by researchers from UN University.

The study explored the regional contributions to the growing 41.8m tonne mountain of e-waste – with the majority (60%) composed of discarded white goods such as microwaves, washing machines and dishwashers.

America, perhaps unsurprisingly, is guilty of producing the most waste in terms of volume, generating 7,072 kilotonnnes of e-waste last year.

China came second with 6,032 kilotonnes of discarded waste, followed by Japan with 2,200 killotonnes.

However, Europe performed the worst in terms of individual waste. The average European threw out 28.4kg of waste, compared to the African average of just 1.7kg.

Phones, computers and printers make up just 7% of electronic waste.

A lonely 16% of rubbish manages to be recycled.

Far more should be done to capture e-waste and “mine” the valuable resources used to make such equipment, said UN under-secretary-general David Malone, rector of the UN University.

“Worldwide, e-waste constitutes a valuable ‘urban mine’ – a large potential reservoir of recyclable materials,” he said.

The combined value of all these valuable resources was about $52bn (£35bn) estimated the report.