Today I take pen in hand and urge you to pass legislation requiring mandatory e-waste recycling plans for AI datacenters before they break ground.
With 4,871 new datacenters already in the construction pipeline in the US, we are sleepwalking into an environmental catastrophe with no plan to clean it up.
The Basel Action Network projects AI-driven equipment retirement will generate up to 13 million metric tonnes of e-waste per year by 2030 — tripling our current annual output.
Server racks, copper cabling, switches — none of it is designed for repair or reuse, and it all needs replacing every two to five years.
That waste is loaded with lead, mercury, cadmium, and forever chemicals. Right now, only one-fifth of e-waste is properly managed, and much of the rest gets dumped in landfills where it leaches into soil and water.
The tech industry is on track to spend $7 trillion building this infrastructure. They can afford to clean up after themselves.
Any datacenter legislation must include enforceable recycling and end-of-life disposal requirements — not voluntary pledges, not industry self-regulation.
This legislation must make it a condition of permitting. No cleanup plan, no data center. Thank you.
First sent on September 16 by Mark
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