UNU report on world wide e-waste

According to United Nations University Report, the quantity of global e-waste thrown-away in 2014 reached 41.8 million tonnes. The volume of world's e-waste in 2014 was nearly 60%, which included discards of kitchen, laundry & bathroom equipment, mobile phones, personal computers and printers accounted for 7%of e-waste in 2015.

This e-waste was not disposed of in an environmentally safe manner and accounted for US $52 billion of possible recyclable resources. As per the UNU Report, the e-waste discarded in 2014 contained 16,500 kilotons of iron, 1,900 kilotons of copper, and 300 tonnes of gold. It also contained significant amounts of health threatening toxins such as mercury, cadmium ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons. As per the report, the US and China are the only countries which discarded almost one-third of the global e-waste in 2014.