Software-Driven Hardware Longevity: Combating E-Waste Through Lightweight Operating Systems and Application Optimization

The global electronic waste crisis has reached alarming proportions, with 62 million tonnes generated in 2022 and projections indicating 82 million tonnes by 2030—growing five times faster than documented recycling efforts. At the same time, functional computing hardware is often prematurely discarded, not because of physical failure, but due to artificial obsolescence driven by increasingly resource-intensive software.