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ZDNET's key takeaways
- E-waste is an environmental hazard.
- The AI data center boom could amplify the problem.
- Waste pickers want a say in the solution.
Solomon Njoroge started picking waste at the Dandora dumpsite when he was a child. He's seen other waste pickers, who work long hours in the 40-acre landfill outside Nairobi, Kenya, suffer asthma, miscarriages, cancer, and respiratory diseases.
A dumpsite like Dandora isn't one person's fault, but rather a literal pileup of choices made by governments, companies, and individuals, going back decades, about how to dispose of the junk and refuse no one wants -- and where to put it.
While the Earth has been drowning in garbage for years, the modern era has introduced a new toxic ingredient: electronic waste, or e-waste.
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E-waste sounds much cleaner than it is. This category of waste is made up of all the TVs, computers, cellphones, and more that people pitch when those devices finally give out, or lose their appeal compared to the newest models.
Discarded electronics are the fastest-growing category of waste, and humans are on track to produce 82 million metric tons annually by 2030.
But as the AI boom brings with it a wave of data centers packed with chips, servers, networking gear, storage devices, cables, and more, researchers estimate the turnover of all that hardware could generate about 2.5 metric tons each year, according to a June report from the United Nations University. That's the equivalent of 250 Eiffel Towers.
"Inasmuch as we are working for development or greatness to change the world… [hyperscalers] should also consider that there are people somewhere, suffering from what they are calling greatness," Njoroge told ZDNET. The former waste picker is the founder of the Dandora Recyclable Waste CBO, which advocates for waste pickers at the dumpsite.
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While an old server might never end up in your backyard, the toxic metals and chemicals like arsenic, lead, cadmium, and mercury found in scrapped electronics contaminate the environment, polluting water systems, ecosystems, and food chains. As one report said, the contamination doesn't stay local. It spreads through the air and seeps into the soil.
Without intervention, the hazard wrought by decaying devices might not stay the problem of Njoroge and his community, but become yours, too.
From data center to dump
In the US alone, more than 1,500 data centers are in different stages of development, according to the Pew Research Center. While there's no guarantee all those chips and servers will end up in a landfill, they will have to go somewhere, and how fast that happens depends on the demands of the AI industry.
"The basic issue is that the way current AI systems, especially generative AI models, are developed, reward scale, acceleration, and rapid turnover," said Golestan (Sally) Radwan, chief digital officer of the UN Environmental Programme.
The US is already home to thousands of data centers, but not all of them are hyperscale data centers. Enterprise data centers, for example, tend to be smaller and more focused on running internal systems for institutions like banks and healthcare companies.
A hyperscale data center is a different beast. Even physically, they tend to be bigger, potentially covering millions of square feet and packing in a minimum of 5,000 servers, according to data from IBM.
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There's some debate around how long hyperscalers will keep hardware like GPUs and servers. CNBC reported that Google, Oracle, and Microsoft have said their servers could last up to six years. Meanwhile, some industry watchers wonder whether some lifespan numbers have been inflated to make depreciation expenses appear friendlier in earnings reports.
Hyperscale data centers, in particular, are filled with spinning media drives for uses like archival storage. These drives are one of the hardest types of electronics to effectively recycle because massive drives take a long time to erase in order to meet compliance standards, and even then, there's no guarantee any sensitive data has been obliterated, said Tony Harvey, vice president and analyst at research firm Gartner.
"If you want to be 100% secure, the only way to get rid of it is physical destruction, which is not good," he said.
The answer to this problem often is shredding, which creates exposure to toxic metals and chemicals if not properly handled.
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To better understand the impact of the recent data center boom, the UN passed a resolution in December, originally proposed by Kenya, acknowledging the opportunities of AI and the need to protect the environment. The resolution calls for AI to be developed and deployed sustainably, and for member states and other stakeholders to make environmental data available so that the impact and potential risks can be studied.
Radwan said the UN wants to survey the whole value chain and quantify what happens at every stage.
"We need to put in place incentives that really encourage that innovation on the technology itself, instead of just hammering on 'it's bad for the environment, and therefore, we need to stop it," she said. "Because in many cases, that comes across as we want to stop doing AI. And that's, of course, not the case."
Circularity comes back around
Some hyperscalers are already trying to bake sustainability into their new data centers in the form of a concept that has existed for decades: circularity.
Circularity encompasses the idea that parts can be reused and recycled to keep them out of landfills for as long as possible.
Microsoft, in its pledge to produce zero waste by 2030, built six Circular Centers around the world. Circular Centers are areas inside data center campuses that process hardware and decommissioned servers.
That equipment will either be refurbished and used elsewhere within the company, sold to third parties for reuse, sent to recycling companies to recover valuable materials, or donated.
For example, older GPUs might get turned into spares or be used to run older AI models.
"If we build and we put products out there, at the end of their useful life, we need to pull those back into the process and recycle. So, I think every industry has the opportunity to do that," Cliff Henson, corporate vice president of cloud supply chain and engineering at Microsoft, told ZDNET.
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Likewise, Google, in its 2025 environmental report, discussed what it called the reverse supply chain. The concept is to recycle, reuse, or resell hardware. The company noted it harvested about 8.8 million hardware components in 2024 that were then reused or resold.
OpenAI declined to comment, and Anthropic did not respond to a request for comment. Both are investing heavily in the construction of new data centers.
Beyond the hyperscalers, others in the space are looking for solutions.
Molg, a Virginia-based company, makes modular robotic "microfactories" that can be installed in data centers to disassemble electronics like servers and laptops, and recover components that can then be recycled or reused. It also works with manufacturers to design products built for reuse.
Radwan hopes that despite demand for the newest, fastest tech like GPUs, the industry can embrace approaches like smaller language models or so-called frugal learning, which could help extend the life of GPUs. Optimizing workloads, training models and data sets, even tamping down stigmatization around tech that's a few years old, could all help. Radwan wants to see more funding for research into these areas and startups embedding sustainability into their foundations.
A seat at the table
For Njoroge, grand plans for how companies will repair and reuse the electronic guts of their data centers lack a crucial component: the input of the waste pickers.
Handling the busted innards of devices is dangerous. Waste pickers burn the rubber off wires and disassemble electronics to retrieve circuit boards or metals like copper and aluminum, which can be sold. Some waste pickers repair items, like smaller consumer appliances, and resell them in markets.
"This is green work. [Waste pickers] are recovering precious materials that otherwise we'd have to go and mine fresh out of the ground," said Richard Neitzel, professor of environmental health sciences and global public health at the University of Michigan.
Neitzel first visited what he described as an open-air municipal dump site situated behind a market in Accra, Ghana, in 2013. It was filled with electronics.
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"These folks … realized that recycling electronics is a viable form of income for them, to recover things like copper and resell them. But, the conditions, without adequate tools, without adequate places to do this work, were really horrifying," he said.
For waste pickers in places like Dandora, sorting, repairing, and reselling to scrap dealers, brokers, or other intermediaries is also how they earn a living -- about 45.5% of Kenya lives on less than $3 a day, according to World Bank Open Data.
Picking waste is also a means of keeping those toxic metals and chemicals out of the environment. Improper e-waste disposal can release up to 1,000 different chemicals into the air alone, according to one report from nonprofit Human-I-T.
"We need to be seen as people who have been recovering millions of tons for decades," Njoroge said over the phone in March. "And yet our job is not recognized, and we are not seen as people who are making an impact during the years that have passed by."
Njoroge envisions waste pickers as part of the fight against waste and pollution. In a sense, protecting the waste pickers means protecting the environment more broadly.
"Waste pickers are not illegal or informal," he said, "they are front-line climate workers."
Over the phone, he described a long list of what waste pickers need to keep not only the environment, but themselves safe. They need personal protective equipment -- basics like gloves, masks, and boots. They need ID cards, safe access to dumpsites, and safe sites for sorting. They need their kids at school instead of working at the dumpsite, exposed to the types of toxins that wreak neurological damage. And when governments and NGOs create policy around e-waste, waste pickers need to be in the room, and not just in a tokenized capacity.
He has his eye on the UN's 2027 Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee meeting on plastics -- a massive waste problem in its own right, and hardly separate from electronics.
As waste pickers around the world organize and secure more opportunities, Njoroge hopes that there's a safer, cleaner future at the dumpsite and far beyond.
"As things are changing and the technology is coming, the AI, all we are seeking is a just transition," he said.