A report by the environmental group Basel Action Network (BAN) warns that the global rush to build datacentres for artificial intelligence will triple the world's annual output of toxic electronic waste within 25 years, creating enough discarded equipment to fill shipping containers that could circle the globe six times. The report highlights that there is currently no plan to manage this waste, which contains hazardous materials such as lead, mercury, cadmium and forever chemicals, at a time when e-waste is already the fastest-growing waste stream globally and only a fifth of it is properly processed.

BAN identified nearly 4,871 new datacentres in the US construction pipeline and calculated waste volumes from servers, cooling systems, cabling and other equipment, much of which is not designed for repair and will need replacing every two to five years. Combined with the projected rapid turnover of consumer devices driven by AI, the report estimates up to 13m metric tonnes of e-waste could be generated annually by 2030, a far higher figure than previous studies. The findings come amid growing concern over AI's environmental footprint, including separate warnings that pollution from datacentre power generation could cause hundreds of thousands of new asthma cases and up to 1,300 premature deaths a year in the US, while the Trump administration has moved to weaken relevant environmental safeguards.