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Electronic Waste Graveyard -- U.S. PIRG
https://pirg.org/edfund/resources/electronic-waste-graveyard/Expiring software or server support created more than one-hundred million pounds of e-waste over past decade
There's a fascinating list of "throw away" products that consumers spent money on and how they became worthless trash after just a short period.
Increasingly, we’re pushed to trash tech that should still work, such as Chromebooks, phones, and smart home devices, just because the software has expired or lost support. This database lists more than 100 tech products that have stopped working after manufacturers dropped support. It calculates the total weight of all these dead devices which have joined the 68 million tons of electronic waste disposed of each year.
When software expires, or web cloud services end, consumers and schools are pushed to replace devices that should still work. For example, our “Chromebook Churn” report found that tens of thousands of laptops were being replaced by schools because the software had expired. We also found Windows 10 will expire in October 2025, leaving up to 400 million PCs that won’t be able to upgrade to the next version.
We estimate a minimum of 130 million pounds of electronic waste has been created by expired software and canceled cloud services since 2014. We estimate that the expiration of Windows 10 will result in 1.6 billion pounds of electronic waste from PCs that can’t upgrade to Windows 11.
For the planet, this lack of support results in a death by a thousand server support cuts. This e-waste adds up. At the very least we need lifetime transparency for tech—we should know how long manufacturers guarantee the tech we buy will work before we buy it.
. . .
When software expires, or web cloud services end, consumers and schools are pushed to replace devices that should still work. For example, our “Chromebook Churn” report found that tens of thousands of laptops were being replaced by schools because the software had expired. We also found Windows 10 will expire in October 2025, leaving up to 400 million PCs that won’t be able to upgrade to the next version.
We estimate a minimum of 130 million pounds of electronic waste has been created by expired software and canceled cloud services since 2014. We estimate that the expiration of Windows 10 will result in 1.6 billion pounds of electronic waste from PCs that can’t upgrade to Windows 11.
For the planet, this lack of support results in a death by a thousand server support cuts. This e-waste adds up. At the very least we need lifetime transparency for tech—we should know how long manufacturers guarantee the tech we buy will work before we buy it.
. . .
Referenced in The Register: https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/11/electronic_waste_graveyard/