New report highlights vast US export of e-waste to developing countries

Details: Vaughan O'Grady; Category: Energy & Sustainability; 24 October 2025; 16964 views

A new investigative report claims to document ways in which a group of large US brokers appear to be facilitating what is estimated to be a billion-dollar trade in exporting electronic waste to developing countries.

The report, called Brokers of Shame: The New Tsunami of American e-Waste Exports to Asia, is the work of the US charitable organisation the Basel Action Network (BAN), whose focus is on toxic trade.

Its name references the United Nations Basel Convention, which restricts the trade of hazardous waste between more developed countries and less developed countries. The US is the only industrialised nation that has not ratified the Basel Convention.

Based on trade data, field observations and independent GPS tracking, BAN’s findings indicate that significant volumes of US electronics continue to be exported to countries that have prohibited their import and often lack capacity for managing them.

The AP news service says that electronic waste, or e-waste, includes discarded devices like phones and computers containing both valuable materials and toxic metals like lead, cadmium and mercury. As gadgets are replaced faster, it points out, global e-waste is growing five times quicker than it is formally recycled. The world produced a record 62 million metric tons in 2022. That’s estimated to climb to 82 million by 2030, according to UN reports.

BAN’s research estimates that each month approximately 2,000 shipping containers (representing roughly 32,947 metric tonnes) may be filled with discarded US electronics waste leaving American ports, destined for countries that have banned their import and are far less equipped to safely handle them.

It highlights ten US businesses engaged in this export and, in a study period between January 2023 and February 2025, identifies Malaysia, a Basel Convention state, as the primary recipient.

Containers tracked by BAN were routed through, and to, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines and the United Arab Emirates despite clear bans under the Basel Convention and national regulations for these countries to lawfully receive this waste.

BAN say that hazardous e-waste may be routinely misdeclared as ‘commodity materials’ such as unwrought metals, or working or new electronics, allowing them to evade detection, or enabling exporters to avoid paying tariffs.

Asia already produces nearly half the world’s total of e-waste. Much of it is dumped in landfills, leaching toxic chemicals into the environment. Some, presumably including imported waste, ends up in informal scrapyards, where undocumented workers burn or dismantle devices by hand, often without protection, releasing toxic fumes and scrap.

In 2022, a record 62 million tonnes of e-waste was produced, and this is projected to rise 32% to 82 million tonnes in 2030. Yet currently only 17–22% is formally collected and recycled, according to UN figures. Much of the counted ‘recycled’ materials end up exported to dirty recycling operations in developing countries, BAN reports.

As long ago as 2023, we produced a series of features examining what we called "the under-reported issue of electronic waste", pointing out that "the scale of the problem has escalated to the point that addressing it is becoming a matter of urgency, particularly in emerging markets". Could the problem have remained unaddressed, or even worsened, since then?