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AI Chips & Compute

AI Data Center E-Waste Could Fill 23 Million Shipping Containers by 2050, Report Warns

New report: AI data center e-waste could hit 617M metric tons by 2050, much at risk of toxic informal recycling.

AI News Feed · 2026-09-17 06:43

The estimate is significantly higher than previous studies because BAN includes all the infrastructure needed to support servers in data centers, not just servers and GPUs. The broader scope provides a clearer picture of the junk AI leaves behind, the group said. "AI may feel weightless, but every model depends on an enormous amount of highly specialized, cutting edge hardware," Jim Puckett, founder and chief of strategic direction at BAN, said in a press release. "If companies and governments do not begin planning for this new waste tsunami, today's AI buildout could become an even more cataclysmic toxic waste crisis than we are already experiencing."

Less than a quarter of the 68.3 million tons of e-waste created each year worldwide is formally collected and recycled. Most e-waste is ultimately dumped into "informal" waste collection, where burning or burying equipment can expose workers and the local environment to toxic materials like lead and chromium.

The United States, which has far more data centers than any other country, has yet to ratify the Basel Convention established to limit the international trade of hazardous wastes. US recyclers still ship e-waste abroad, investigations have found, where it often slips into "backyard recycling." According to the World Health Organization, millions of children forced to work or live nearby face health threats from that informal recycling.

BAN predicts global e-waste will triple to as much as 211 million metric tons a year by 2050. It attributes about 15 to 20 percent of that garbage to AI. Unlike previous AI e-waste estimates that focused on servers and GPUs, BAN expands its count to include power supply and distribution, cooling systems, backup power, and networking equipment. BAN also counts what it calls "AI Waste Contagion," a wide-ranging category that incorporates everything from telecommunications infrastructure to personal devices likely to become obsolete and replaced earlier as a result of advances in AI.

Counting it all up, BAN expects 70,000 metric tons of e-waste per gigawatt of data center capacity. It cites a McKinsey projection that total data center capacity will reach up to 219GW by 2030.

Considering AI-related electronic equipment retired between 2025 and 2050, BAN concludes that will add up to between 395 and 617 million metric tons of e-waste by the middle of the century. That breaks down to about 8.6 million to 13.1 million metric tons of equipment retired each year as a result of AI.

Previous estimates of AI's e-waste have been more conservative. A study published in 2024 predicted that e-waste from AI could reach between 1.2 million and 5 million tons by 2030. A study published in February found that AI servers could create between 131,000 and 225,000 tons of e-waste annually by the end of the decade, an amount comparable to all the e-waste produced by a country the size of Denmark. BAN says that by focusing on servers and accelerators, past studies miss about 87 percent of a data center's electro-mechanical infrastructure.