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CIO.com · September 18, 2026 · On the brief until October 2, 2026

The amount of e-waste caused by AI is underestimated: we can’t only include the servers

Environmental ScienceOperationsInformation Systems
THE AI ANGLE
Accelerating data center infrastructure turnover and expanding non-server e-waste

A report from the Basel Action Network warns that AI e-waste projections are vastly underestimated because prior calculations only tracked servers and accelerators, overlooking cooling, power distribution, and networking infrastructure that represent 87% of data center electromechanical mass. Although analysts debate the report's assumptions regarding rapid 2.5-year replacement cycles and sustained growth rates, experts stress that AI is causing economic obsolescence to outpace physical equipment lifespans. This demands that operations and technology leaders expand their capital planning and sustainability models beyond compute capacity to include comprehensive lifecycle and material managem

Summary written by AI Business Lens with an AI model from the article at cio.com. It is not the article, and the publisher has not reviewed it. For publishers.

THE TEACHING ANGLE
Students can evaluate the tension between physical and economic obsolescence by examining whether cascading older accelerators to secondary workloads realistically offsets the massive e-waste footprint of supporting infrastructure.

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