We are hopefully all on the same page that e-waste is now a big problem. And it is a growing problem of humanity.

Or maybe not. I don’t know. Personally, I like to keep my old stuffs as a memoir, I barely remember myself throwing electronics to garbage. Even if I do, it is probably not 8kg per year.

Personal e-waste calculation

Let’s do quick math together. In every 15 years, I may want to get rid of my white appliances. Quick googling about their weights:

Refrigerator: ~100 kg

Washing Machine: ~ 70 kg

Dishwasher: ~50 kg

Oven: ~50 kg

Microwave: ~15 kg

285 kg / 15 years = 19 kg. Let’s say the average family is 3 people. 6 kg per person per year.

And I forgot batteries and toys are also in the same pocket. Now I started to feel guilty about that e-waste problem.

OK. I probably have more than 8 kg per year. Found guilty!

Some eye-catching statistics about e-waste

I don’t want this blog post to be a normal SEO driven blog post. But even before SEO was a thing, to catch reader attention, it is always nice to talk with numbers :) So, let me introduce you some numbers about this specific problem of humanity.

According to United Nations, 1 around 7.8 kg per capita e-waste is generated in 2022. That means 62 billion kg yearly, but that number probably doesn’t mean much for an individual - yet only 22.3% of it was formally collected and recycled.

While former collection numbers are better in global north, e-waste per capita is way less in South Asia or Africa.

According to EU, e-waste collection numbers are in better shape. In 2022, 11.2 kg of electrical and electronic equipment waste were collected per inhabitant in the EU.

The economic value of the metals contained in the e-waste generated globally in 2022 is estimated at USD 91 billion.

Currently, e-waste management generates USD 28 billion worth of secondary raw materials out of the maximum of USD 91 billion. Most losses occur due to incineration, landfilling or substandard treatment. The current secondary raw material production avoids extraction of 900 billion kg of ore.

In 2019, the world generated 53.6 million metric tons of e-waste (Global E-Waste Monitor). That’s like throwing away 1,000 laptops every second.

Circular Electronics Design Course

So, I don’t know what is your profession, but I hope I can do something about it. At least we can learn more about it and try to vocalize that problem as much as we can. Just for that reason, I started to take an online course from edX DelftX: Designing Electronics for Recycling in a Circular Economy. While watching that course, I realized plastic as a material is kind of biggest issue while grinding electronics waste.

For the first couple of weeks, they focused on plastic as a case material, that might be another blog post topic for me. But today, I would like to have a quick journey with you to the very core of the electronics: Electronics circuit themselves!

PCB Recycling

Before jumping to substrate material, let’s quickly summarize what normal PCB Recycling means for today.

PCB’s are probably around 5% of the total mass of e-waste. If you imagine a bit white appliances, PCB is just a small part of it. But If you look at your old mobile phone, maybe it would be nice to recycle that PCB as well as screen and battery and case plastic or metal.

There is of course market of PCB recycling. It is mostly focused to North America and Europe2 due to stringent environmental regulations. I found an article3 from Dongsheng, Industrial precious metal recycling company, summarizing PCB recycling industry.As they stated, PCB e-waste recycling market reached to 646 million USD in 2024, and projected to grow to 1 billion USD by 2031.

And we have Swedish company leading PCB manufacturing industry! Boliden, Swedish metals, mining and smelting company headquartered in Stockholm.4

Here’s something I didn’t expect: when they smelt PCBs, the plastic part actually melts and works like fuel. It even helps generate steam for electricity and heating.

These guys are mainly after precious metals, but hey — they also burn the leftover plastics for district heating. Not bad for trash.

Turns out smartphones are the biggest chunk of PCB recycling — around 35% of all the recovered stuff. Makes sense, they’re tiny but full of precious metals.

Precious metals? We are using gold in PCB’s :) But not everytime.

Here is more numbers related to PCB recycling:

• In terms of application sectors, smartphones represent the largest source of printed circuit board recycling globally, accounting for approximately 35% of total recovered material.
• Computers and laptops contribute 28%; telecommunications equipment 15%; televisions and monitors 12%; and other applications collectively make up 10%.

And finally, there are a couple of methods for PCB recycling: Mechanical, Pyrometallurgical or biotechnological. Most widely adopted method is as you guess mechanical :)

But besides all precious metals, today’s usual suspect is located under those metals. Literally core of the PCB’s, named FR-4.

What is FR-4

FR stands for flame retardant. FR-4 is popular because it has the right mix of electrical, thermal, and mechanical properties that make it a great “default” choice for electronics. In plain words, it has:

• low moisture absorption. Meaning, it won’t swell or get ruined by a bit of water.
• stable dielectric constant. Something technical, but basically means it is cheap and easy to use them as substrate. We can roughly be sure that it is going to be flat dielectric constant all around the PCB.
• good electric insulation. Means you can safely put copper traces with FR-4 in between. No way to have short circuit between them in normal circumstances.
• Mechanical stiffness. Your board doesn’t bend like cardboard. It can actually do that If it is too thin to 0.4mm. But it is out of the topic for now :)
• Heat resistance. Crucial, because the way we still connect electronics is old-school: we literally melt solder to attach components.

And that last part hit me — after all this time, we’re still basically using “tiny molten metal puddles” to hold circuits together. It works, but think about the carbon footprint of heating every single joint to a few hundred degrees. That’s not small when you scale it to billions of devices.

Technically, FR-4 is just glass fiber cloth soaked in epoxy resin and pressed flat. But at the end of the day, it’s plastic. And here’s the catch: it’s a thermoset plastic. That’s why it’s strong and durable… but also why it’s a nightmare to recycle. Once it’s cured, it won’t melt or reshape. End of life? You can grind it, you can burn it, but you can’t really recycle it.

That can be later another blog post, but here we should quickly put side info: What makes plastics recyclable? It is a bit material science, but basically high school chemistry that everyone can basically understand. But I am skipping that to stay in context.

Types of plastics

As far as I read and understand, there are mainly 2 types of plastics in recycling context.

Thermoplastics

Most of the daily plastics we know - bottles, packaging, toys - are thermoplastics. Polyethylene, Polypropylene, PVC, PLA (the one I used a lot with 3D printers) and so on.

That basically means you can melt it down with heat and mold it again. Simple, right?

Well, not that easy. Each time you melt and reform it, the plastic loses a bit of quality. Because of basic high school chemistry. Even the “good ones” are usually not recyclable more than five or six times. And almost every recycling loop is a downstream step — the plastic comes back as something lower-grade. Think: not another shiny bottle, but maybe a structural material, a park bench, or filler for construction.

And, you can’t easily find a pure plastic without any additive to make it shiny in electronics industry.

Thermoset plastics

Other type is thermosetting plastics. Epoxy is the classic example. Once it’s set, it’s locked forever. Yes, scientists can crack it with fancy chemistry, but in plain money terms — way too expensive.

Guess what! FR-4 is also under the group of thermoset family. If you imagine yourself recycling an old electronics, even if you recycle all the plastics, you end up having that green plates: printed circuit boards a.k.a. PCB.

Do we have a solution?

We’ve been using FR-4 for so long that the whole electronics industry basically married it. Every design tool, every factory, every soldering line — all built around this one material. So changing it is not like swapping batteries. It’s more like asking the entire world to stop eating bread and figure out a new breakfast.

But yesterday I learned there are some efforts to shake things up. Instead of epoxy + glass fiber, researchers are experimenting with a new substrate material, one you can actually recycle. Imagine melting down an old circuit board, pulling out the copper traces and chips, and starting fresh.

New player joined game: Vitrimers

Back in 2015, in France, scientists introduced a new type of plastic called vitrimers. They behave like thermosets (strong, rigid, heat-resistant) but they’re actually recyclable like thermoplastics. Basically the best of both worlds.

And that’s why they look like a great candidate to end the old FR-4 tyranny.

Fast-forward to today — teams at the University of Washington together with Microsoft Research are building actual vitrimer-based PCBs5 (they call them vPCBs). These are not just lab curiosities; they’ve already made boards that transmit Wi-Fi signals, survive soldering, and still get recycled afterward. Heat them, separate the layers, recover the copper, glass fibers, and the polymer — and reuse them again. They claim recovery rates like 98% for the polymer and 100% for the glass fibers. That’s basically unheard of in the e-waste world.

Of course, it’s still early days. These vPCBs are coming out of research labs, not your local electronics store. But the fact that people are working on this — and that big players like Microsoft are paying attention — makes me hopeful. Maybe in a few years, when I finally throw out that 100 kg refrigerator, the little green board inside it won’t be doomed to landfill anymore.

Some questions left in my mind

I always like to finish blog posts with a couple of questions that still bother my mind.

Can we delegate e-waste separation process by educating the public?

At least as an engineer, I believe I can do that for free as a evening activity with my son. But, it is probably hard to educate the public to do that safely. There can be some hazardous chemicals…

Never mind, actually.

Would you be willing to pay a little more for a phone or a laptop if you knew its circuit boards could be fully recycled?

It is economical question and very important question. Probably early adapters suppose to pay more for that vPCB’s. Or some regulations coming to force us to use recyclable materials everywhere.

In 500 years, will future archaeologists dig up our landfills and call this the “age of green PCBs”?

That would be cool futuristic solarpunk story. They would probably find full of plastic artifacts and assume we used plastic everywhere. Funny thing is they will be absolutely right about that :)

Besides metals and rare metal minerals in e-waste, does it really matter to reuse plastic substrate?

I keep asking myself. While we are trying to reduce plastic waste mass, what is going to happen after we completely find a plastic eating bacterias? Viable, environmental solution to all leftover plastics. They were all fossil while ago, they hopefully will be fossil or something useful for nature.

Further Reading

Blog posts

https://www.eenewseurope.com/en/researchers-address-e-waste-with-recyclable-healable-circuit-boards/

https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/news/new-vitrimer-pcbs-recycled-many-times-over/

Video or podcasts