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Digital e-waste is a uniquely troublesome form of trash, because if you just dump those gizmos in a landfill, toxic chemicals can leach out of them into the soil and water. In rich countries, most people have no easy way to recycle their old Samsung Galaxy phones, Xbox controllers, and other devices, so tons of them end up gathering dust in junk drawers and garages. The United Nations estimates that, worldwide, only 17 percent of all ewaste is collected and recycled. The rest gets dumped, burned, or just forgotten about. The question of how to deal with it all, and who will pay what price, is growing more urgent—particularly since e-waste is also an important potential source of critical metals. Digital gadgets contain a whole gamut, from the copper in their cables to the lithium, cobalt, and nickel in their batteries. All told, that means the world is wasting close to $60 billion worth of metals in e-waste every year.

The problem is that digital devices contain only a small amount— sometimes a really small amount—of each metal. The scrap value of a single phone, earbud, or Fitbit is pretty low. But in poor countries like Nigeria, there are lots of people willing to put in the time and effort required to recover some of that value. Their role is much like Steve Nelson’s in Vancouver—individual little streams disemboguing scrap into the global river. The difference is that there are many, many more of them, working for even less money. There are no official statistics, but research indicates that there are tens of thousands of e-waste scavengers in Nigeria alone. Some go door-to-door in residential neighborhoods with pushcarts, offering to take away or even buy people’s unwanted electronic goodies. Some, like Anwar, work the secondhand electronics markets, buying bits and pieces of broken gear from small businesses or rescuing them from the trash. Many of them earn less than the international poverty line, currently about US $2.15 per day. 

Excerpted from Chp 9 of Power Metal: The Race for the Resources that will shape the future by Vince Beiser.