Report Warns AI E-Waste Is Severely Underestimated and Rising Sharply
A new report from the Basel Action Network (BAN) warns that AI-related electronic waste could reach 395 to 617 million tonnes of retired equipment between 2025 and 2050. By 2050, AI-driven infrastructure could account for 15% to 20% of all global e-waste annually, far exceeding previous estimates. As tech companies rapidly expand data centers to support AI models, improper accounting of e-waste risks triggering a severe toxic waste crisis. With less than a quarter of global e-waste currently recycled formally, hazardous substances like lead and chromium pose growing risks to human health and local ecosystems. BAN attributes previous undercounts to focusing solely on GPUs and servers, which omits nearly 87% of data center electromechanical infrastructure such as power supply, cooling, backup power, and networking hardware. The report calculates that every gigawatt of data center capacity generates roughly 70,000 tonnes of e-waste, with global capacity expected to hit 219 GW by 2030.
## BACKGROUND
The Basel Action Network (BAN) is an environmental non-governmental organization named after the 1989 Basel Convention, a United Nations treaty governing the international trade of toxic wastes. Under the Basel Convention, electronic waste containing toxic substances like mercury and lead is classified as hazardous waste to prevent wealthy nations from dumping toxic scrap in developing countries.