Across the globe, electronic waste is piling up. In 2019, over 53 million metric tons of electronics ended up in the trash, and that number is expected to double by 2050, according to a BBC report. But less than 20% of used electronics are currently recycled. This means a lot of valuable resources are literally going to waste. Among the components are bits of silver, copper, gold and steel. In total, scraps of electronic devices represented $57 billion-worth of resources in 2019, of which $47 billion-worth wasn't recycled. Africa holds the lowest rate of formal e-waste recycling in the world -- only 1% of binned devices are redirected to recycling plants. But Enviroserve, one of the world's largest electronics recyclers, see this as an opportunity. With e-waste on the rise globally, the company has built a plant in Dubai capable of processing 14 times more e-waste than it does today. It processes waste from 10 countries across the Middle East and Africa and can recycle up to 98% of the material from an electronic device into raw materials, which are then sold to manufacturers in the automotive, IT and construction industries.
