E-waste statistics: Mexico, the Americas and the world

The global picture: growing faster than it is recycled

The Global E-waste Monitor 2024 — the UN reference report, produced by UNITAR and the ITU — recorded 62 million tonnes of electronic waste generated in 2022, and projects 82 million by 2030. The alarming part is not the volume but the gap: e-waste is growing roughly five times faster than its documented recycling, and only 22.3% was formally collected and processed.

Put differently, almost 4 out of every 5 kilos of discarded electronics worldwide end up with no traceability at all — in landfills, burned, or inside informal chains that recover the easy copper and abandon everything else, hazardous substances included.

The Americas: high generation, modest recovery

The region generated 14.1 kg per person in 2022 — well above the world average of 7.8 kg — and 14.1 million tonnes in total. But the documented collection and recycling rate lands at just 4.2 kg per person, roughly 30% of what the region generates. The United States is the largest single generator in the Americas; Brazil and Mexico follow.

For a company with operations on both sides of the border, that contrast is the whole point: the same corporate hardware fleet can be retired under very different levels of documentation depending on which side it is retired on — and only one of those versions survives an audit.

Mexico: between 1.1 and 1.5 million tonnes a year

This figure deserves precision, because it circulates rounded in every possible direction: Mexico does not publish an official annual e-waste generation figure. What exists are estimates, and the available ones place national generation between 1.1 and 1.5 million tonnes per year. The per-capita rate, on the other hand, is measured by the Global E-waste Monitor: 11.8 kg per inhabitant in 2022, clearly above the 7.8 kg world average. By volume, that makes Mexico the second largest generator in Latin America after Brazil, and the third in the Americas behind the United States.

On regional recycling rates the same care applies: the UN Regional E-waste Monitor estimates that only about 3% is formally collected, but that study covers 13 countries of Latin America and the Caribbean that do not include Mexico. It is useful as regional context, not as the Mexican rate. For Mexico, available estimates suggest that between 40% and 60% of e-waste ends up in landfills, open dumps or inadequate disposal.

On paper the framework exists: electronic waste is special-handling waste subject to a management plan under NOM-161-SEMARNAT. The gap is in practice — most corporate e-waste is still discarded without documentation, which exposes companies to penalties and to information leaks.

What the "waste" is actually worth

E-waste is the richest urban mine there is. The Global E-waste Monitor 2024 estimated that the metals contained in the 2022 stream — copper, gold, iron, aluminium and others — were worth around US$91 billion, of which only about US$19 billion was recovered through environmentally sound recycling. For a sense of concentration, the EPA notes that a tonne of circuit boards can hold 40 to 800 times more gold than a tonne of mined gold ore.

That is why electronic scrap has a purchase value: recycling it is not only compliance, it is capital recovery for the company that generated it.

The environmental cost of not recycling

Badly discarded electronics release lead, mercury, cadmium and flame retardants into soil and water. Conversely, formal recycling avoids emissions and energy use: the EPA estimates that recycling one million laptops saves the electricity equivalent of the annual consumption of more than 3,500 U.S. homes. To translate your own company's equipment into avoided CO₂ and diverted waste, use our impact calculator.

What this means for a company on the border

Tijuana and Baja California concentrate manufacturing, maquiladoras and nearshoring operations — which means corporate e-waste generation well above the national average. Every fleet refresh, decommissioned site or retired production line feeds that stream. The difference between being part of the documented minority and the undocumented rest comes down to one habit: disposing of equipment through a documented process, with data destruction and the records that back up compliance on both sides of the border.

Sources

• The Global E-waste Monitor 2024 — UNITAR / ITU (UN): ewastemonitor.info
• Regional E-waste Monitor — Latin America 2022 — UNITAR / UNU (UN): PDF report
• U.S. EPA: epa.gov
• SEMARNAT — Mexican regulatory framework (NOM-161-SEMARNAT-2011): gob.mx/semarnat
• UNAM — estimates of national generation and inadequate disposal in Mexico.

How to cite this page

This compilation is free to use for press, academic work, sustainability reporting and AI assistants. We ask only two things: cite the original source of each figure (all are linked above) and, if you use the compilation itself, link back to this page.

Tianlu Inc. (2026). E-waste statistics: Mexico, the Americas and the world. Retrieved from https://tianluinc.com/en/e-waste-statistics

Last reviewed: July 2026. Global figures correspond to data year 2022, published in the 2024 report. Where a figure is an estimate rather than a measurement, this page says so explicitly instead of presenting it as official.