The e-Waste Crisis
"Four billion pounds of electronic waste, or e-waste, was discarded in the United States in 2005 the laws governing export of trade in hazardous electronic waste are tragically inadequate."
Every year, an estimated 400 million units of obsolete electronics are scrapped. Four billion pounds of electronic waste, or e-waste, was discarded in the United States in 2005, accounting for between 2% and 4% of the municipal solid waste stream. As much as 87.5% of this was incinerated or dumped in landfills. Of the remaining 12.5% collected for “recycling,” industry sources claim that about 80% is exported to developing countries where it is processed in primitive conditions, severely endangering the environment, workers and communities. Pollution created by irresponsible e-waste processing can also come back to haunt those in the exporting countries as well in the form of air pollution fallout via long-range transport.
The world faces an e-waste crisis because of the following factors:
"Unlike other countries in the world, the U.S. sends much of its hazardous e-waste to U.S. prisons."
- Huge volumes: The dual forces of rapid obsolescence of electronic gadgetry combined with astronomically burgeoning use have created mountains of e-waste—the largest growing waste stream our economy produces.
- Toxic design: Electronic equipment contains some of the most toxic substances known: mercury, lead, cadmium, arsenic, beryllium, and brominated flame retardants, among others. Thus, when this equipment becomes waste, it is toxic waste. When burned, even worse toxins can be formed such as dioxins and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons that can cause cancer and birth-defects. Until recently, far too little emphasis has been placed by manufacturers on eliminating toxic materials.
- Poor design and complexity: e-waste is full of many different materials (such as multiple kinds of metals, plastics and chemicals) that are mixed, bolted, screwed, snapped, glued or soldered together. This makes separation for recycling difficult. Further, little attention has been paid to designing equipment for recycling. Therefore, recycling either requires intensive labor or sophisticated and costly technologies.
- No financial incentive to recycle: There’s usually not enough value in most electronic waste to cover the costs of responsibly managing it in developed countries unless laws require such management as a service industry. For this reason it is exported to countries where workers are paid low wages and the infrastructure and legal framework is too weak to protect the environment, workers and communities.
- Reuse abuse: Sending equipment and parts for reuse - an important solution - can easily be abused by falsely labeling scrap as reusable or repairable equipment. Often this “reusable” equipment ends up getting dumped in countries lacking any infrastructure to properly manage it.
- Policy of “free trade in toxic waste”: In the U.S. and Canada, the laws governing export of trade in hazardous electronic waste are tragically inadequate, and thus these two countries are the primary sources of the global crisis. The U.S. is the only developed country in the world that has failed to ratify the 1989 Basel Convention, an international treaty controlling trade in hazardous waste from richer to poorer countries. In 1995, that treaty adopted a full ban on exports from rich to poorer countries. Both the U.S. and Canada actively oppose this prohibition. In Canada, the Basel Convention is not properly implemented, allowing almost all e-waste to flow abroad freely. In both countries, then, it is perfectly legal for businesses to maximize profit by exporting toxic electronics to developing countries, even when this export is a violation of the laws of importing countries. The export of toxic electronic waste to developing countries disproportionately burdens them with a toxic legacy and allows for externalization of real costs.
- Prison laborers employed to process e-waste: Unlike other countries in the world, the U.S. sends much of its hazardous e-waste to U.S. prisons to process in less-regulated environments without the worker protections and rights afforded in the private sector. Moreover, such operations amount to government subsidies, undermining the development of responsible private-sector recycling infra-structure and distorting the economics of recycling.
- Private data is imbedded in electronic devices: Computers, PDAs, mobile phones and even printers and fax machines hold private data such as social security, bank account and credit card numbers and private emails. These can be used by criminals involved in identity theft to hijack bank accounts and conduct blackmail and extortion if this data is not completely eradicated. Loss of confidential data is another form of liability and irresponsibility stemming from improper e-waste disposal.
- Lack of regulation requiring proper management: U.S. regulations mostly exempt the electronic waste stream from environmental laws and active OSHA oversight. Further, according to the laws of Canada and the U.S., most toxic electronic waste is still perfectly legal to dispose of in non-hazardous waste landfills and incinerators.
Documented harm
"Images of men, women and children burning tons of toxic circuit boards, wires, and plastic parts exposed the fast-cheap-and-dirty side of our consumption of computers, televisions, faxes, printers, etc."
In 2002, the Basel Action Network (BAN) and the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition released the ground breaking report and film Exporting Harm: The High Tech Trashing of Asia, that exposed the toxic “recycling” of discarded electronics in China. A second film and report released in 2005 by BAN, The Digital Dump: Exporting Reuse and Abuse to Africa, showed similar tragic results happening in Africa, this time in the name of ‘reuse’ and ‘bridging the digital divide.’ Images of men, women and children burning tons of toxic circuit boards, wires, and plastic parts exposed the fast-cheap-and-dirty side of our consumption of computers, televisions, faxes, printers, etc. Furthermore, BAN analyzed hard-drives from exported computers collected in Africa and found massive amounts of private data freely available for criminal exploitation. We have also discovered that when U.S. prisoners are used as cheap labor, they are exposed to these poisons as well. The Federal Prison Industries’ UNICOR, which processes much of the e-waste in the US, is now the focus of a Department of Justice investigation for the toxic exposures prisoners suffer. Finally as much as 87 percent of discarded toxic e-waste is simply dumped in municipal landfills or incinerators, ill equipped to contain or destroy such toxic waste.
Unfortunately this grossly irresponsible waste mismanagement and toxic trade is the norm in the North American recycling industry. It is still all too commonplace for recyclers and even electronics manufacturers, aided by the inadequate or non-existent policies of the Canadian and U.S. governments, to leave the dirty and dangerous work of managing our toxic waste to the poorest of the poor in developing countries. The resulting environmental hazards and social injustice ravage the land and people in these developing nations. Furthermore, these poisons come back to our shores and into our bodies via long-range air and ocean pollution, toxic imports and contaminated food.
Government failure: externalizing our toxic impacts
"United States and Canada have failed to create legislation providing a national system to finance and responsibly deal with toxic e-waste."
To date, unlike the 27 member countries of the European Union, the United States and Canada have failed to create legislation providing a national system to finance and responsibly deal with toxic e-waste. Instead, an e-waste anarchy is sanctioned, where we can exploit the cheap and dirty ‘solutions’ that ‘externalize’ (or pass on) the real toxic impacts and their costs to others - poor communities in developing countries, disempowered prisoners in this country, or local municipalities and taxpayers who suffer from this material getting dumped in local landfills or incinerated, polluting soil, air and water. Further, the U.S. and Canada have failed to ratify or properly implement the Basel Convention that prescribes international rules to prevent such toxic waste trade.
US Congress’ watchdog agency, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) recently published a report entitled, “Electronic Waste: EPA Needs to Better Control Harmful U.S. Exports through Stronger Enforcement and More Comprehensive Regulation.“ [http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d081044.pdf] The GAO report describes, in no uncertain terms, the complete inadequacy of legislation to control e-waste exports and the lack of EPA enforcement of the minimal regulations that do exist, resulting in a flood of toxins to the developing world.
Instead of properly regulating electronic waste management and trade, the EPA has tried to bring interest groups together to create voluntary solutions. These efforts have ended in failure or have produced little more than minimalist, ‘lowest-common denominator’ standards, which seemingly please everyone, including waste exporters, but result in continued abuse to the environment and human health. One of these efforts is the recently released “R2” Standard for Responsible Recycling.
Meanwhile, in lieu of an appropriate federal response, states and municipalities must cope with the national failure by passing a variety of local laws and state laws. However, the U.S. Constitution forbids these local governments from legislating international trade, so states and municipalities are helpless to prohibit the flood of e-waste leaving our shores. It is in this unregulated landscape, that responsible electronics recycling companies are challenged to compete against unscrupulous brokers, and exporters and those who deceptively call themselves “recyclers.” These bad actors simply load up seagoing containers and ship U.S. hazardous electronics to the highest bidders globally. Almost always, this results in the wastes shipped to a developing country to be processed by cheap, unprotected labor to maximize profits. These “low road” operators are thriving while the responsible companies, with their safer, more expensive methods, struggle.