Data Center Recycling: Why E-Waste Recycling Falls Short — and What to Do Instead
TL;DR: Data center e-waste is growing faster than recycling can handle. According to the UN’s Global E-waste Monitor 2024, only 22.3% of the world’s 62 million tonnes of annual e-waste is properly recycled — and that rate is projected to drop to 20% by 2030. Traditional recycling breaks equipment down into raw materials, but it can’t keep pace with the volume, doesn’t address data security, and still produces new products that eventually become waste themselves. IT asset disposition (ITAD) — which prioritizes secure data destruction, documented chain of custody, and equipment refurbishment over material shredding — offers a more complete solution. Human-I-T’s data center ITAD services combine certified data sanitization, on-site destruction capability, and full decommissioning with a refurbishment model that gives end-of-life equipment a second life.
Table of Contents
- Data Center Recycling: Why E-Waste Recycling Falls Short — and What to Do Instead
- How Serious Is the Data Center E-Waste Problem?
- What Types of Equipment Do Data Centers Dispose Of?
- What Is the Environmental Impact of Data Centers?
- Why Doesn’t Traditional E-Waste Recycling Solve the Problem?
- What Is a Better Alternative to Recycling Data Center Equipment?
- What Can Data Center Operators Do Right Now
- Frequently Asked Questions About Data Center E-Waste
- Contact us today to learn how Human-I-T’s IT asset disposition services can help your data center with secure decommissioning, certified data destruction, and compliant equipment disposal.
How Serious Is the Data Center E-Waste Problem?
It’s massive, and accelerating. Data centers are one of the fastest-growing sources of electronic waste globally, driven by AI infrastructure buildout, shorter hardware refresh cycles, and explosive demand for compute capacity.
According to the UN’s Global E-waste Monitor 2024, the world generated a record 62 million tonnes of e-waste in 2022 — an 82% increase from 2010. That volume is on track to reach 82 million tonnes by 2030. Only 22.3% was documented as properly collected and recycled, leaving $62 billion worth of recoverable materials unaccounted for.
According to Statista (March 2025), the United States now operates approximately 4,200 data centers — nearly ten times the next-highest country. According to Axios (December 2025), nearly 3,000 additional data centers are under construction or planned nationwide to meet AI-driven demand.
According to a 2024 study published in Nature Computational Science, generative AI alone could contribute an additional 1.2 to 5 million tonnes of cumulative e-waste by 2030, depending on adoption rates. The researchers found that servers and GPUs powering large language models are typically replaced every 2–5 years, with more than 80% of decommissioned equipment currently discarded rather than refurbished.
According to Data Center Knowledge (February 2025), between 20 and 70 million hard disk drives in the U.S. reach end of life each year — most of which are shredded and sent to landfills rather than sanitized and reused.
What Types of Equipment Do Data Centers Dispose Of?
Data centers generate e-waste across three main equipment categories, each with distinct recycling and disposition challenges.
Networking equipment facilitates communication and data transfer within and between systems. This includes routers, switches, firewalls, load balancers, and network cables. These components are replaced frequently as bandwidth demands increase.
Server equipment handles computational tasks, data storage, and application hosting. This includes web servers, database servers, application servers, file servers, and increasingly, GPU-dense AI inference and training servers. According to Net Zero Insights (November 2025), 42% of IT managers reported replacing servers every 2–3 years in a 2020 survey — a cycle that has likely shortened further with AI-driven hardware demands.
Infrastructure equipment includes everything else in a data center’s physical architecture: storage systems (SANs, NAS), power distribution units (PDUs), uninterruptible power supplies (UPS), cooling systems, racks, monitors, and cabling. These components contain heavy metals and complex material compositions that make recycling difficult.
What Is the Environmental Impact of Data Centers?
Data centers produce environmental harm through both energy consumption and equipment disposal — and both are getting worse as AI scales demand.
According to the International Energy Agency, data centers consumed approximately 415 terawatt-hours of electricity globally in 2024. According to the World Economic Forum (December 2025), that figure is projected to more than double to 945 TWh by 2030 — slightly more than Japan’s total annual electricity consumption.
According to a Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory report (January 2025), data centers accounted for over 4% of total U.S. electricity consumption between September 2023 and August 2024, with more than half of that electricity sourced from fossil fuels.
Beyond energy, improper e-waste disposal from data centers causes soil contamination, air pollution, and water pollution. According to the UN’s Global E-waste Monitor 2024, poor e-waste management practices cause $78 billion in externalized costs to human health and the environment each year, stemming from lead and mercury emissions, plastic leakages, and greenhouse gas contributions.
Data center equipment is rarely designed with end-of-life recycling as a priority. Planned obsolescence and rapid innovation cycles mean functional equipment is decommissioned long before it fails — creating a disposal problem that traditional recycling infrastructure was never built to handle at this scale.
Why Doesn’t Traditional E-Waste Recycling Solve the Problem?
Recycling addresses part of the data center e-waste problem, but it has fundamental structural limitations that prevent it from being a complete solution.
Volume outpaces capacity. According to the UN’s Global E-waste Monitor 2024, e-waste generation is rising five times faster than documented recycling rates. The global recycling rate is projected to fall from 22.3% to 20% by 2030 under current trends. The recycling infrastructure simply cannot scale fast enough.
Material complexity limits recovery. Electronic devices contain hundreds of component materials, many of which are difficult or hazardous to separate. Heavy metals like cadmium, lead, and mercury, along with brominated flame retardants, make environmental contamination hard to prevent during the recycling process itself.
The process is resource-intensive. Recycling electronics requires specialist knowledge, expensive equipment, and significant energy for smelting, refining, and shredding. According to the UN’s Global E-waste Monitor 2024, the overall economic impact of e-waste management in 2022 was a net loss of $37 billion when accounting for externalized health and environmental costs.
Policy is fragmented. According to the Nature Computational Science study (2024), the United States has no federal regulations governing e-waste management. Only 25 states have some form of e-waste legislation, and only 16 ban e-waste from landfills.
Ethics remain a concern. Investigations, including those by the Basel Action Network, have documented the export of e-waste to unregulated landfills in developing countries, where burning and informal processing releases harmful chemicals with serious health consequences. This is why employing certified IT Asset Disposition (ITAD) providers — like Human-I-T — is so important.
Recycling perpetuates the cycle. Perhaps most fundamentally, recycling ends with the creation of new products — which eventually become waste themselves. It recovers materials but doesn’t reduce the total volume of equipment entering the waste stream. A different approach is needed.
What Is a Better Alternative to Recycling Data Center Equipment?
Refurbishing and reusing equipment is a more effective approach than breaking it down for raw materials. Rather than salvaging metals for new product manufacturing, refurbishment reloops entire devices back into the usage lifecycle — a truer expression of the circular economy.
According to the Nature Computational Science study (2024), extending the lifespan of data center hardware by just one additional year would reduce equipment entering the end-of-life stream by 62% under aggressive AI adoption scenarios. The researchers found that combining lifespan extension with component refurbishment and material recycling could reduce AI-related e-waste generation by 16–86%.
This is the core of IT asset disposition (ITAD) — a structured approach to managing end-of-life equipment that goes beyond material recovery. A certified ITAD provider handles the full lifecycle: secure data destruction, documented chain of custody, compliant asset tracking, and responsible disposition through refurbishment or certified recycling. For data center operators looking for this kind of comprehensive approach, learn more about Human-I-T’s data center ITAD services.
What Can Data Center Operators Do Right Now
There are concrete steps data center operators can take today to move beyond traditional recycling toward more effective e-waste management.
Prioritize refurbishment over recycling. Have current data center equipment collected by a certified IT asset disposition provider and, when appropriate, refurbished for reuse rather than sent directly to material recycling.
Extend equipment lifecycles. Evaluate whether planned new purchases could be reduced in favor of maintaining and upgrading existing equipment. Even modest lifespan extensions have outsized impacts on total e-waste volume.
Vet ITAD providers on compliance. Investigate which ITAD providers offer NIST 800-88-compliant data sanitization, documented chain of custody, and certified downstream recycling through R2 and e-Stewards partners.
Human-I-T helps data center operators go beyond traditional recycling through secure IT asset disposition services that include NIST 800-88-compliant data sanitization, on-site mobile shredding, full data center decommissioning, and certified chain of custody documentation. Our facilities hold NAID AAA, ISO 9001, ISO 14001, and ISO 45001 certifications, with non-reusable materials processed through R2 and e-Stewards-certified downstream partners. Learn more about our data destruction process.
Frequently Asked Questions About Data Center E-Waste
How much e-waste do data centers produce?
Data centers are among the largest contributors to global e-waste, though exact figures for the sector alone are difficult to isolate. According to the UN’s Global E-waste Monitor 2024, global e-waste reached 62 million tonnes in 2022 and is projected to hit 82 million tonnes by 2030. According to a 2024 study published in Nature Computational Science, generative AI infrastructure alone could add 1.2 to 5 million tonnes of cumulative e-waste by 2030. Data center servers and GPUs are typically replaced every 2–5 years, with the majority discarded rather than refurbished.
What is the difference between e-waste recycling and IT asset disposition (ITAD)?
E-waste recycling breaks down electronic equipment into raw materials (metals, plastics, glass) for use in new product manufacturing. IT asset disposition (ITAD) is a broader process that includes secure data destruction, asset tracking, compliance documentation, and — where possible — refurbishment and reuse of entire devices before resorting to material recycling. ITAD addresses data security and regulatory compliance in ways that traditional recycling does not.
What happens to data on decommissioned data center equipment?
Without proper data sanitization, sensitive information can persist on decommissioned drives and storage media. Certified ITAD providers follow standards like NIST 800-88 for data sanitization, which includes software-based wiping with verification and physical destruction (crushing or shredding) for media that cannot be fully sanitized. Human-I-T performs all data sanitization at NAID AAA-certified facilities and provides serialized Certificates of Data Destruction for audit compliance.
Can data center equipment be donated instead of recycled?
Yes. Donating functional data center equipment to a certified nonprofit ITAD provider like Human-I-T gives equipment the same certified data destruction process — NIST 800-88 sanitization, chain of custody documentation — but devices that can be refurbished are redistributed to underserved communities instead of being shredded. Donors receive a tax-deductible donation receipt and full compliance documentation.
What certifications should a data center e-waste provider have?
Key certifications include NAID AAA (secure information destruction, verified by unannounced audits), R2 (Responsible Recycling standard), e-Stewards (the strictest environmental standard for electronics recycling), ISO 9001 (quality management), ISO 14001 (environmental management), and ISO 45001 (occupational health and safety). Human-I-T holds NAID AAA, ISO 9001, ISO 14001, and ISO 45001 directly, and routes all non-reusable materials through R2 and e-Stewards-certified downstream vendors.
