Hanoi, Vietnam. Millions of tons of discarded electronics from the United States are being shipped overseas, much of it to developing countries in Southeast Asia that lack the capacity to safely handle hazardous waste, according to a new report released Wednesday by an environmental watchdog.

The Seattle-based Basel Action Network, or BAN, said its two-year investigation found at least 10 US companies exporting used electronics to Asia and the Middle East, calling it a “hidden tsunami” of electronic waste.

“This new, almost invisible tsunami of e-waste is padding already lucrative profit margins of the electronics recycling sector while allowing much of America’s used IT equipment to be secretly exported and processed under harmful conditions in Southeast Asia,” the report said.

Growing E-Waste Crisis
Electronic waste, or e-waste, includes discarded phones and computers that contain both valuable materials and toxic metals such as lead, cadmium, and mercury. As consumers replace devices more frequently, global e-waste is growing five times faster than it is being properly recycled.

The world generated a record 62 million metric tons of e-waste in 2022, a figure expected to climb to 82 million by 2030, according to the United Nations’ International Telecommunication Union and UNITAR.

That American e-waste adds to the burden for Asia, which already produces nearly half the world’s total. Much of it ends up in landfills, where toxic chemicals leach into the environment, or in informal scrapyards where workers burn or dismantle devices by hand without protective gear.

BAN estimated that about 2,000 containers, roughly 33,000 metric tons of used electronics, leave US ports each month. These shipments, often handled by “e-waste brokers,” are sent to companies in developing nations instead of being recycled domestically.

Companies Named
The report identified Attan Recycling, Corporate eWaste Solutions (CEWS), Creative Metals Group, EDM, First America Metal Corp., GEM Iron and Metal Inc., Greenland Resource, IQA Metals, PPM Recycling, and Semsotai among those involved.

Six of the companies did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Semsotai said it only exports functional components for reuse, not scrap, while PPM Recycling said its shipments to Malaysia consisted only of metals and complied with trade codes. Greenland Resource said it was reviewing the allegations internally. CEWS said it follows strict environmental standards but could not disclose all operational details.

Between January 2023 and February 2025, the 10 companies exported more than 10,000 containers of potential e-waste valued at over $1 billion, BAN said. Industrywide, such trade could exceed $200 million a month.

Eight of the 10 companies hold R2V3 certifications, an industry standard meant to ensure responsible recycling, raising concerns about how such certifications are monitored and enforced.

Skirting International Rules
Many e-waste containers go to countries that have banned such imports under the Basel Convention, which is an international treaty that bars hazardous waste trade from non-signatories like the US, the only industrialized nation yet to ratify it.

The nonprofit said its review of government and private trade records from ships and customs officials showed shipments were often declared under trade codes that did not match those for electronic waste, such as “commodity materials” like raw metals or other recyclable goods, to evade detection. Such classifications were “highly unlikely” given how the companies publicly describe their operations, the report said.

Tony R. Walker, who studies global waste trade at the Dalhousie University’s School for Resource and Environmental Studies in Halifax in Canada, said he wasn’t surprised that e-waste continues to evade regulation. While some devices can be legally traded if functional, most such exports to developing nations are broken or obsolete and mislabeled, bound for landfills that pollute the environment and have little market value, he said.

He pointed to Malaysia, a Basel Convention signatory identified in the report as the primary destination for US e-waste, saying the country would be overwhelmed by that volume, in addition to waste from other wealthy nations.

“It simply means the country is being overwhelmed with what is essentially pollution transfer from other nations,” he said.

‘Mecca of junk’

The report estimates that US e-waste shipments may have made up about 6 percent of all US exports to the country from 2023 to 2025. After China banned imports of foreign waste in 2017, many Chinese businesses shifted their operations to Southeast Asia, using family and business ties to secure permits.

“Malaysia suddenly became this mecca of junk,” said Jim Puckett of the Basel Action Network.

Containers were also sent to Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines and the UAE, despite bans under the Basel Convention and national laws, the report added.

In countries receiving this U.S. e-waste, "undocumented workers desperate for jobs" toil in makeshift facilities, inhaling toxic fumes as they strip wires, melt plastics and dismantle devices without protection, the report said.

Authorities in Thailand and Malaysia have stepped up efforts to curb illegal imports of U.S. e-waste.

In May, Thai authorities seized 238 tons of US e-waste at Bangkok’s port seized 238 tons of U.S. scrap at Bangkok’s port, while Malaysian authorities confiscated e-waste worth $118 million in nationwide raids in June.

Most of the facilities in Malaysia were illegal and lacked environmental safeguards, said SiPeng Wong, of Malaysia’s Center to Combat Corruption & Cronyism.

Exporting e-waste from rich nations to developing nations strains local facilities, overwhelms efforts to manage domestic waste and is a form of “waste colonialism,” she said.