TRASHED.EARTH

Every second, Earth gets trashed.

How we count electronic waste

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The e-waste tile uses an annual estimate of 62 million metric tons of discarded electronics generated worldwide, spread evenly across the calendar year. It does not track individual devices as they are thrown away.

How the counter works

  1. Start with 62,000,000 metric tons per year.
  2. Measure how much of the current calendar year has elapsed.
  3. Display that fraction of the annual total, updating continuously.

Phones, laptops, and appliances are not discarded at a perfectly steady rate — new product launches, subsidy cycles, and repair culture all create real-world unevenness. The counter assumes an average daily flow for clarity.

Where 62 million tons comes from

The figure comes from the Global E-waste Monitor 2024, published by UNEP alongside the International Telecommunication Union and other partners. Their latest assessment recorded 62 million tonnes of e-waste generated in 2022, with the total rising by roughly a third over the past decade.

E-waste includes discarded electrical and electronic equipment: phones, computers, televisions, refrigerators, and the growing category of small devices and IoT hardware. The monitor tracks generation by weight, not by device count.

Only a fraction of this material is formally collected and recycled. Much is stored in drawers, informally dismantled, or exported — often with serious health and environmental consequences for the communities handling it.

What this number does not capture

  • Devices still in use or hoarded — generation is not the same as disposal in a given year.
  • Hazardous components separately — the tonnage figure is total weight; lead, mercury, and rare earth recovery rates vary widely.
  • Right-to-repair effects — longer device lifetimes could slow growth in generation, something a static annual rate may lag.

Why we show it anyway

Electronics are among the fastest-growing waste streams on the planet, and they contain both toxic materials and recoverable resources. The counter highlights that discarded tech accumulates continuously. Read it as a UNEP-tracked annual generation estimate, not a live count of every binned gadget.

Further reading