International E-Waste Day 2025

Oct 14, 2025

2 min read

It’s International E-Waste Day 2025!

🌱 Why is there an International E-Waste Day?

International E-Waste Day, which is held annually on October 14th, intends to create awareness around the global impacts of e-waste and to promote circularity in electronic and electrical products. The day was initiated by the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Forum and it was first held in 2018, which makes today the eighth International E-Waste Day!

🌱 What is the focus this year?

The slogan this year is: “Recycle your e-waste – it’s critical!”. With this slogan, consumers are being encouraged to recycle their electrical and electronic devices and special attention is being drawn to the critical raw materials found in e-waste.

🌱 How much e-waste do people have laying around?

According to a recent study from UNITAR and the WEEE Forum, an average household has 74 electronic items – excluding lamps and luminaires. Of these “61 items are in use, nine are hoarded but working, and four are hoarded and not working”. This means that “[t]he total mass of items in households is 90 million tonnes (Mt) of which 7 Mt is hoarded and working, and 3 Mt is hoarded and broken”.

🌱 Why should you recycle your e-waste?

While critical raw materials “are mined in only a handful of countries”, they “can be recovered from unused or broken electronic products sleeping in our drawers and attics” around the globe. By returning old phones, laptops, chargers or other electronic items “through official collection channels, consumers play a direct role in keeping critical resources in the loop and supporting the circular economy”. According to a recent study from TNO, selectively recovering critical raw materials from e-waste could make it possible to meet up to 31% of the EU’s current demand of critical raw materials through recycling.

🌱 Why does recovering copper from cables make sense?

In an average UK household, there are 15 unused or forgotten cables lying around. Each of these cables contain finite materials – such as copper – that are needed to be able to produce new electronics, medical equipment, and renewable energy technologies. Recycling copper notably “uses up to 85% less energy than mining new copper” and can help to mitigate some of “the detrimental environmental and social impacts of mining”.

💡 Are you interested in learning more about e-waste and its impacts? Then, have a read through our blog posts or check out the hashtag #EWasteDay.