 |
| Datacenter equipment won’t be designed for repair and reuse, the report projects, and would need to be completely replaced every two to five years. Photograph: Tatsiana Volkava/Getty Images |
Datacentres in The Guardian
Wed 16 Sep 2026
The electronic trash AI generates in the next 25 years could fill enough shipping containers to encircle the globe six times, it said. Yet, says the report by the non-profit environmental group Basel Action Network (BAN), there is no plan to deal with that waste – which typically contains toxics like lead, mercury, cadmium and forever chemicals, as well as valuable metals that are challenging to reclaim.
“Already electronic waste is the fastest-growing waste stream on the planet and only one-fifth is properly managed,” said Jim Puckett, co-founder of BAN, which works to see that toxic waste doesn’t end up getting dumped on the world’s poorer communities.
Experts concur. “We’re doing a terrible job of handling e-waste in the US,” said Vince Beiser, author of the book Power Metal, which details the global problems of trying to reclaim valuable metals inside electronic goods. “Some of it gets dumped overseas. Most of it just gets dumped in landfills, which is a problem because it can leach all kinds of nasty things into the water, into the soil.”
There are 4,871 new datacenters in the construction pipeline in the US, the report said, adding that, while not all are clearly designated for use by AI, many will be.
It calculated the volumes of e-waste related to computer servers used for AI, and to “the thousands of tonnes of copper, steel, concrete” for cooling, power distribution, networking and energy storage equipment needed to operate inside datacenters.
To estimate the total, the report estimated the amount of computing power analysts project will be built – totalling roughly 100 gigawatts of new capacity worldwide by 2030 alone and growing beyond... READ MORE https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/sep/16/datacenters-pollution-electronics