Korea Environment Corporation (K-eco) and UNU Resource Nexus are continuing their longstanding collaboration with another project on waste from the Resource Nexus perspective. In 2026, the focus will be on the electronics sector.
While most large electronics producers are based in Eastern Asia and the United States, the sector’s environmental footprint is global. Raw materials include a wide range of metals (e.g., copper, lithium, nickel, cobalt), semi-conductor materials (e.g., silicon, gallium), rare earth elements, and petroleum-based products like plastics. Some of these are critical raw materials due to geopolitical, environmental, and social risks resulting from uneven global distribution and complex extraction and processing. Production and use of electronics equipment is highly energy-intensive, a significant source of pollution of environmental resources such as water, soil and air.
The integration of electronic components into a plethora of appliances along with their relatively short lifespan, especially battery-powered electronic devices, has led to an ever-increasing stream of e-waste that currently exceeds 62 million tons annually (UNITAR 2024). South Korea is one of the world’s major electronics-producing countries and has the highest per capita electronics usage among seven Asian countries (South Korea, China, India, Japan, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, and Malaysia). As a result, it generates the second-largest volume of e-waste per capita, following Japan.
With the ASCENT project, K-eco and UNU Resource Nexus aim to raise awareness of the environmental footprint across the stages of the electronics lifecycle from a Resource Nexus perspective. The dependencies, synergies and trade-offs between different environmental resources across the four lifecycle stages will be reviewed: 1) extraction of raw materials, processing and transport; 2) manufacturing components, assembly and distribution; 3) use of electronics; and 4) end-of-life stage.
The review will inform a policy-oriented 30-60 minutes e-learning module structured around the four lifecycle stages, combining explanatory content, interactive elements, short videos by experts, and lifecycle and nexus visualizations. Case studies from South Korea and selected international contexts will provide real-world examples of opportunities for managing trade-offs among environmental resources across the lifecycle stages. The material will allow flexible use in online or blended learning settings for higher education and executive policy training contexts.
