Some countries that are significant importers of global waste do not have strong waste management infrastructures, which makes handling the waste difficult. In the absence of government programs, entrepreneurs have started their own initiatives to aid local communities in managing waste. Learn about two individuals in Ghana combating e-waste and glass waste, respectively.
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In 2017, a report on global e-waste predicted the amount of e-waste would increase to 52.2 million metric tonnes by 2021—but we already passed 53 million metric tonnes in 2019 alone, according to a new report released this month. Learn more about why e-waste amounts are surging, why current recycling systems are not keeping up, and what can be done to combat the problem.
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The Basel Action Network is a nonprofit organization dedicated to preventing pollution dumping in developing countries. Learn what it is doing to prevent recyclers from exporting electronics overseas and find out how its e-waste sting operation in 2015 revealed a shocking betrayal.
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Extracting rare earth elements from e-waste can be difficult. The Department of Energy’s Critical Materials Institute and other labs are collaborating to develop new recycling methods—and one method is set for commercial production of rare-earth oxides.
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The next summer Olympics will be held in Tokyo in 2020. As part of its Games Sustainability Plan, Japan recycled almost 80,000 tons of electronic devices to collect enough metal to create 5,000 Olympic medals.
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Researchers have developed a simple process for extracting rare-earth magnets from discarded electronic devices. Their method reduces manufactured waste and recycles materials into magnets for other uses.
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In an effort to increase its sustainability and materials recycling efforts, Apple just unveiled a new robotic iPhone disassembly system, Daisy, that can separate and recover valuable materials from used iPhone devices in a matter of minutes.
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Cost effective technique for mass production of high-quality graphene, superacids are good medicine for super thin semiconductors, and other materials stories that may be of interest for April 18, 2018.
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Diverse metals mix it up in novel nanoparticles, world added far more solar than fossil fuel power generating capacity in 2017, glass is humankind’s most important material, and other materials stories that may be of interest for April 11, 2018.
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A new study by researchers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and the University of Minnesota shows that nanoparticles of lithium battery catalyst nickel manganese cobalt oxide may harm important bacteria that reside in the soil and have untold environmental consequences.
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