U.S. tops world e-waste ranking with 9.4 million tons per year

PanARMENIAN.Net - Brazil has generated 1,4 million tons of electronic waste last year - the equivalent of 7 kilos per person, says a study by UN partnership organization StEP Initiative, according to ZDNet.

The research says the yearly world volume of end-of-life electronic devices is expected to increase to 65.4 million tons by 2017 - a 33 percent jump in five years of electronics that have been used and discarded.

In Latin America, Brazil leads the ranking, with two million tons of electronic put on the market and 1.4 million tons of such waste being generated in 2012. Second on the ranking is Mexico, with 1.5 million tons of electronic put on the market and 1 million tons of waste generated last year.

Despite the alarming number in Latin America, the e-waste management situation in other countries is also far from rosy, ZDNet says. The U.S. leads in the e-waste league table, at 9.4 million tons per year; this means Americans produce an average of 29.8kg in e-waste each citizen per year.

China comes in second with 7.3 million tons, but the individual e-waste production is low in comparison to other countries at the top of the ranking, with each person averaging 5.4kg of e-waste.