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Each transaction processed on the Bitcoin network generates an average of 272 grams of electronic waste. This is how the study
Bitcoin's growing e-waste problem
estimates it
, published in the journal
Resources, Conservation and Reycling
this week. A transaction is any shipment of this cryptocurrency between two users, which is backed by what is known as mining. To get an idea of what this means, the new iPhone 13 weighs 173 grams, meaning that each of these movements produces the approximate equivalent of a mobile and a half in waste.
Bitcoins mining is essential to carry out transactions and guarantee the security of the Bitcoin network. It is carried out by thousands of people in the world - the BuyBitcoinWorldwide portal estimated that there may be around a million miners - equipped with specialized computer equipment. The enormous energy consumption of all these machines has raised controversy in the past. Even Elon Musk pointed out this fact when announcing that Tesla stopped supporting cryptocurrency as a means of payment. (Although he then backed off.) But much less has been said about the huge mountain of waste it generates.
In the study it is calculated, counting until May 2021, that in the last year the processing of this cryptocurrency generated 30,700 tons of electronic waste. Researchers compare it to the trash that the whole of the Netherlands generates in small electrical or electronic equipment. And the pace increases. With the Bitcoin price spikes seen in the first months of this year, those responsible for the study believe that the electronic waste generated would reach 64,400 tons per year. It is waste that poses a serious threat to the environment. They contain chemicals and heavy materials that can leach into the soil and water, causing damage to the areas where they land.
The problem is that, more often than is desirable, these wastes are not recycled properly. In Spain, for example, 888,000 tons were generated in 2019, but only 287,000 were officially recycled. "They have the difficulty that you need advanced technology to be able to separate the different components and materials with which these products are made," explains Rafael Serrano, director of Institutional Relations at Fundación Ecolec, specialized in electronic recycling. “There are plants for the management of this waste that make investments of close to 10 million euros. And then they have to carry out an amortization process so that it turns out to be profitable in the end ”.
This high initial investment prevents the proliferation of accredited entities to do this work. But, according to Serrano, the process is economically profitable because plants continue to open plants and do not close. Pollution due to mismanagement of this waste is joined by another environmental consequence. “There is a problem of loss of resources. In these products we can find copper, aluminum, iron, small percentages of silver or gold. If they are not managed properly, end up in a landfill or forgotten in a drawer, we are losing all those resources. And we will have to go to nature to look for those raw materials that we need to produce consumer goods ”, he points out.
Currently there are formulas to extract the materials of these electronic components, what is called urban mining.
But for that correct management is needed.
The financial system also pollutes
A United Nations report put global figures on electronic waste.
It reached 50 million tons, of which only 20% are recycled.
Translated into economic value, this equates to more than $ 62.5 billion, which exceeds the GDP of Slovenia or Croatia.
The study published by
Resources, Conservation and Reycling
also points out that the traditional financial system generates its own waste, in the form of ATMs and computers.
The adoption of Bitcoin is very low compared to the global banking system. And this makes it difficult to draw parallels. But in an article published by the cryptocurrency exchange platform Coinbase, it was pointed out that the energy consumed by Bitcoin was a fifth of that used by all bank branches and ATMs.
Alex Preukschat, co-founder of Blockchain España and Alianza Blockchain Iberoamérica, offers his own point of view. "If in the end we manage to create a decentralized financial system in which there are no longer bank branches and other things are eliminated, such as computer equipment, it is not clear how the net balance of electronic waste would be," he says. For now, Bitcoin is seen as a great experiment that progresses little by little. "Until we are clear about the use case that we are replacing with Bitcoin, we cannot make a real comparison of energy use," adds Preukschat. And this also extends to the generation of electronic waste.
For Serrano, the problem of electronic waste is global and transversal to many industries.
Today there is an illegal traffic of this garbage, which ends up in large landfills on the west coast of Africa, in areas of Ghana or the Ivory Coast.
In this sense, a purely physical aspect, of weight and size, is important.
“The market launch figures for this type of products, office automation, such as computers or printers, are small.
They do not reach 45,000 tons, ”says Serrano, citing data for Spain from the Register of Industrial Establishments for Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment from statistics prepared by Ecolec.
This number would only represent 4.5% of the total electrical and electronic equipment.
Those who increase this figure, therefore, are refrigerators, washing machines and other large appliances.
Small computing devices are a small part of electronic waste, but this does not detract from the relevance of the garbage generated by mining Bitcoin. Preukschat believes that the study is successful to highlight an issue that until now has hardly been discussed in the crypto sector. "As there is a competition in the race to solve blocks (the process to mine bitcoins), perhaps new more powerful machines have been bought to do mining," he reflects.
In reality, mining consists of putting computers to solve mathematical calculations on the Bitcoin blockchain network.
The miners compete with each other to try to get the prize, the bitcoins, with which they are rewarded for giving up their computing power to do these mathematical calculations.
In this way, an incentive system is formed that is self-sustaining and that, in addition, the more participants it has, the more security it will give to the network.
But at the same time, this race for rewards from mining encourages more IT resources to be devoted to the task.
And also that old machines are renewed by new, more powerful ones.
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