Cisco’s Sustainability 101: What Is the Circular Economy? - Seite 2

In addition, when we use less material to make products, we also reduce the amount of energy used for mining and production of materials, not to mention reducing the additional environmental impacts of mining. And when we reduce how much of them end up in landfills, we protect groundwater supplies, avoid emissions from landfill gas from biodegradable items, and avoid filling valuable landfill space.

An increasing circularity gap

When old electronics are simply discarded, they often contain hazardous materials like lead or mercury that may travel through a landfill and back out into water supplies or soil. The more electronics can be recycled, reused or otherwise repurposed instead, the less our environment is impacted by those products breaking down and by the virgin materials we must mine or create to make new products.

But research shows our society is not taking enough of these steps. The 2023 edition of the Circularity Gap Report, an annual study of circularity adoption worldwide by Circle Economy, states that the global economy increasingly relies on materials from virgin sources. This is due to growing demand for materials needed for buildings, infrastructure, and other durable goods - like electronics. The authors estimate that the global economy is only about 7.2% circular, down from 9.1% in 2018.

This increasing gap is also evident in the European Environmental Bureau findings that more than 13 million tonnes of electrical and electronic equipment were sold in the EU in 2021 - an increase of over 85% since 2013. In that same year, 4.9 million tonnes of e-waste were registered - just over 37% of the volume sold.

And other parts of the world fare worse on e-waste-a report published by the United Nations in 2020 estimated that, based on 2019 data, the global collection rate for e-waste is only 17 percent, leaving a tremendous amount of valuable materials that could be recovered and reused.

The missed opportunity for recycling and reuse isn't simply an environmental issue, it's also an economic one. Global e-waste means billions of U.S. dollars' worth of raw materials, including copper, iron and tin, and more valuable metals like gold, silver, and palladium are being discarded and are no longer available for use. Not recovering those materials means that manufacturers must source fresh supplies of them.