Electronic Waste Graveyard
Part of the Public Interest Network
{ document.getElementById('searchform').focus(); }, 300);">Search
Trending
Pesticides
Beyond plastic
Kids’ health
Our work
Consumer protection
Democracy & government
Health
Transportation
Waste & recycling
Toxics
Clean water & air
Global warming
Energy
States
Arizona
California
Colorado
Connecticut
Florida
Georgia
Illinois
Iowa
Maryland
Massachusetts
Michigan
Missouri
New Hampshire
New Jersey
New Mexico
North Carolina
Ohio
Oregon
Pennsylvania
Rhode Island
Texas
Washington
Wisconsin
Donate
Donate
More ways to give
Close
Search
Search
Close
Search
Trending
Pesticides
Beyond plastic
Kids’ health
Donate
Donate
More ways to give
Nav
Close
Martin Schlecht, graphic by staff | Adobe Stock
Take Action
Close<br>Consumer Tech Hero & Horror Stories
Consumer Tech Hero & Horror Stories
Submit your story
Downloads
Electronic Waste Graveyard Report (2026) Report
Nathan Proctor
Senior Director, Campaign for the Right to Repair, U.S. PIRG Education Fund
Lucas Gutterman
Former Director, Designed to Last Campaign, U.S. PIRG Education Fund
Increasingly, we’re pushed to trash tech that should still work, such as Chromebooks, phones, and smart home devices, just because the software has expired or lost support. This database lists more than 100 tech products that have stopped working after manufacturers dropped support. It calculates the total weight of all these dead devices which have joined the 68 million tons of electronic waste disposed of each year.
When software expires, or web cloud services end, consumers and schools are pushed to replace devices that should still work. For example, our “Chromebook Churn” report found that tens of thousands of laptops were being replaced by schools because the software had expired. Since the graveyard was released in 2025, we have tracked a wave of new product shutdowns, some affecting a handful of niche gadgets, and one, Microsoft’s end of support for Windows 10, affecting 400 million computers at once.
We now estimate 1.7 billion pounds of electronic waste has been created by expired software and canceled cloud services since 2014. The largest contributer by far was the expiration of Windows 10 resulting in up to 1.6 billion pounds of electronic waste from PCs that can’t upgrade to Windows 11.
13 Amazon Kindle models have also joined the graveyard this year. On May 20, 2026, Amazon cut off store access for 13 older Kindle models released between 2007 and 2012 — devices that, in many cases, are still being used daily by their original owners more than a decade later. The e-readers still turn on, still display books already downloaded, and still hold a charge. What they can no longer do is buy or download anything new, effectively ending their useful life as e-readers for many owners. Amazon’s shutdown means these e-readers can’t even borrow books from users’ local public libraries.
For the planet, this lack of support results in a death by a thousand server support cuts. This e-waste adds up. At the very least we need lifetime transparency for tech—we should know how long manufacturers guarantee the tech we buy will work before we buy it.
1,700,000,000 pounds of electronic waste
Our estimate of the waste created by expired software and canceled cloud services since 2014.
Consumer Tech Hero & Horror Stories
Right to repair
Consumer Tech Hero & Horror Stories
Are you someone with a tech tale to tell? We're looking for compelling, relatable stories about the lifespan of your devices--both the highs and the lows.
Submit your story
Methodology
The Electronic Waste Graveyard is a non-exhaustive list of consumer tech products which have been rendered unusable due to lack of software support or server shut downs. We categorized products into several types. We categorize the reasons why products have stopped working into the following categories: Change in business model/financial reasons, Stopped offering cloud support (quick death), Halted software updates (slow death),
Losing web access, Servers down, Regulatory concerns, Safety concerns. In order to estimate a minimum amount of electronic waste generated, we estimated the minimum number of global sales for each product and multiplied it by the weight of the product. Sales numbers are closely held propriety information, in order to estimate a lower-bound we used a variety of public sources and several modeling assumptions. We used the following sources of public information: product series-level sales data, market share data, manufacturer sales data by year, revenue from product, estimate from reliable source, sales revenue for manufacturer by year, number of companion app downloads, sales revenue for individual product and online review numbers. We assumed that 80% of sales for a given year were for products released that year and that sales were evenly distributed between all models released that...