The Pulse
BAN Projects Up to 617 Million Tonnes of AI-Driven E-Waste by 2050
The Basel Action Network says AI-driven electronic equipment retirements could total 395 million to 617 million tonnes between 2025 and 2050.
AI.info Team ·
BAN Publishes AI E-Waste Projection
The Basel Action Network says artificial intelligence could generate between 395 million and 617 million tonnes of retired electronic equipment from 2025 through 2050. The projection appears in a September 15, 2026, item on BAN’s website, which identifies the work as a first-of-its-kind full-infrastructure analysis.
BAN’s published summary describes the figure as a projection of AI-driven electronic equipment that could be retired during the 25-year period. It does not present the estimate as a measurement of equipment already discarded. The range reflects the analysis’s lower and upper projections, with 617 million tonnes representing the high end.
The organization also gives the estimate a physical comparison. If the equipment were packed into shipping containers and placed end to end, BAN says the line would circle the Earth about six times. The comparison is intended to illustrate the projected mass of the equipment associated with AI infrastructure over the period covered by the analysis.
What the Published Summary Says
BAN’s page describes the analysis as covering the full infrastructure associated with AI, rather than presenting a narrower estimate limited to a particular class of hardware. The summary does not provide a detailed list of equipment categories, individual replacement assumptions or annual retirement figures. It also does not include the report’s full methodology.
The page links to a separate Constant Contact address for the complete material. The available BAN page itself contains only the headline, the September 15 date, a short summary and the link to that material. As a result, the published page supports the cumulative projection and the container comparison, but not additional calculations or descriptions that are absent from its text.
A Projection, Not a Current Waste Count
The figures concern equipment that could be retired between 2025 and 2050. They therefore describe a possible future waste stream rather than a total already recorded by recycling systems or public agencies. The source does not state how much AI-related equipment has been discarded to date, nor does it provide a current annual total for AI-related electronic waste.
The summary also does not state how much of the projected equipment would be reused, recycled, stored, exported or disposed of through other channels. Those questions may be addressed in the full material linked by BAN, but they cannot be established from the text published on the organization’s page.
BAN’s verified public summary makes one central claim: a full-infrastructure analysis projects 395 million to 617 million tonnes of AI-driven electronic equipment retirements between 2025 and 2050, with the upper range equivalent to a line of shipping containers circling the Earth about six times. The page contains no attributable quotation; a search of the published text found no statement by Jim Puckett or another named speaker.