This 6,000-word feature by Vince Beiser| explores the complicated potential—and perils—of electronic waste recycling as a means to help solve the climate crisis. Worldwide, only about 22 percent of e-waste is collected and recycled. The rest is dumped, burned, or forgotten—particularly in wealthy nations, where most people have no convenient way to dispose of outdated electronics. In total, humanity wastes over $60 billion in recoverable metals each year—materials desperately needed for everything from smartphones and laptops to EV batteries, wind turbines, and solar panels.
In developing countries like Nigeria, though, things are very different. There, thousands of people make a living mining those discarded devices for the critical metals essential to both our digital lives and the clean energy transition.
The story begins in Lagos, Nigeria, where young e-waste scrapper Baba Anwar scavenges for valuable parts in a sprawling open-air computer market. He sells his finds to entrepreneur Tijjani Abubakar, who has built a thriving business exporting digital detritus—rich in copper, cobalt, lithium, gold, and rare earth elements—to buyers in China and Europe.
Nigeria’s informal recycling sector, though often overlooked, recycles up to 75 percent of its e-waste—a far higher rate than in the US, where fewer than 1 in 6 phones are recycled. But this efficiency comes at serious costs to local people and their environment. Workers burn plastic coatings off wires to recover copper and smelt aluminum in open-air furnaces, spewing toxic fumes into the air. The scenes at Lagos’ Katangua dumpsite—where barefoot children and laborers sort and burn e-waste amid towering trash piles—are harrowing.
There are cleaner alternatives—but they also face obstacles. Companies like the Dutch startup Closing the Loop and Canada’s Li-Cycle offer safer and more environmentally sound e-waste recycling. However, it turns out that clean recycling is expensive, difficult to scale, and faces a range of other hurdles, from exploding used lithium batteries to fluctuating commodity prices.
Meanwhile, the urgency is growing. Global demand for metals like lithium, cobalt, and copper is skyrocketing due to the renewable energy boom. Without more recycling, the “clean” energy transition will continue to drive more mining, with all the pollution and devastation that comes with it.
The bottom line: recycling is not a silver bullet. There is no single, simple solution to the problem of where to get the critical metals required for the energy transition. To build a truly sustainable future, we will need to start thinking beyond merely replacing fossil fuels with renewables and increasing our supplies of raw materials. We will need to reshape our relationship to energy and natural resources altogether.
The feature includes photos by Nigerian photojournalist Oyewole Lawal, vividly illustrating the lives of Lagos’ e-waste recyclers. A dynamic infographic supplements the piece, visualizing the small percentage of recycled American smartphones and the precious metals they contain.
The article received wide acclaim, including reprints in Wired and Canada’s National Observer, and sparked discussions on several social media platforms about our waste streams and the global e-waste economy.
