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Where That 'Recycled' E-Waste Really Goes
UXBRIDGE, Canada - Is your old TV poisoning a child in China? Or your old computer contaminating a river in Nigeria?
Migrant child from Hunan province sits atop one of countless piles of unrecyclable computer waste imported from around the world. Guiyu, China. (Credit:© Basel Action) Network A small group of people have now allied with a few responsible
recyclers to ensure e-waste can be treated responsibly by creating an
e-Stewards certification programme. Announced this week, e-Stewards are
electronics waste recyclers that are fully accredited and certified by
an independent third party.
Such accreditation is crucial in an industry that often makes fraudulent claims. Currently even when e-waste (electronic trash) goes to a "green" recycler, the chances are high that toxic stuff from the developed world ended up in a huge pile in the middle of some village.
The U.S. generates an estimated three million tonnes of electronic waste, such as cell phones and computers, each year. U.S. citizens bought some 30 million television sets this year and that number will be higher next year as all U.S. TV networks switch to digital broadcasts Feb. 17.
So where do these old, unwanted TVs go?
One destination is Hong Kong, activists say.
"I recently watched shipping containers loaded in the U.S. being opened on the docks in Hong Kong," said Jim Puckett, coordinator of the Basel Action Network (BAN), an NGO named for the treaty that is supposed to stop rich countries from dumping toxic waste on poor ones.
"Inside they were packed with e-waste, including TVs and computer monitors," Puckett told IPS.
Puckett estimated that 100 containers of e-waste arrive in Hong Kong every day and are then smuggled into China. "It's all coming from the U.S. and Canada but I couldn't see everything that was going on," he said.
Much of this activity is illegal in China. But it is a very big and profitable industry so many officials in China and elsewhere are willing to look the other way, he said.
Sixty Minutes, a prominent weekly U.S. news programme, aired an investigative documentary film this week about Puckett's claims and tracked shipping containers from U.S. recyclers to Hong Kong to villages in China like Guiyu. "We were in Guiyu over six years ago and conditions are far worse today," he said.
The mountain of e-waste grows each day as new electronic devices are created to drive an economy rooted in endless growth. And consider that 85 percent of e-waste goes in landfills or is incinerated locally, contaminating the United States' groundwater and air. Millions more stockpiled computers, monitors and TV are sitting in basements, garages, offices and homes.
So what's a responsible person to do with their e-waste in the face of government negligence, manufacturers' irresponsibility and recyclers' greed?
"With little likelihood of a federal law under the [George W.] Bush administration we decided to work with the recycling industry," said Sarah Westervelt of BAN.
Together with the Electronics TakeBack Coalition and 32 electronics recyclers in the United States and Canada, BAN announced an e-Stewards programme this week. It will be the continent's first independently audited and accredited electronic waste recycler certification programme. Dumping of toxic e-waste in developing countries, local landfills and incinerators will be forbidden, as will the use of prison labour to process e-waste.
"Right now it's impossible for people to know which recycler is doing the right thing," Westervelt told IPS.
Companies and organisations claiming to be green regularly misrepresent how the waste is being handled. "People are being duped by companies," she said.
"Ninety percent of companies in my estimation are defrauding their clients," agreed Bob Houghton, president of Redemtech, an e-waste recycler and member of the e-Stewards programme.
Many companies provide documents to companies or local governments claiming the e-waste has been processed safely but actually send it to the third world, Houghton said.
When the U.S. city of Denver wanted an e-waste recycler, it insisted on a no-cost recycler, and that's how Denver's e-waste ended up in China, as featured in the 60 Minutes documentary, says Mike Wright, CEO of Guaranteed Recycling Experts in Denver.
"It's impossible to recycle e-waste at no cost without exporting it," Wright told IPS.
Wright's company didn't win the Denver contract for that reason, and that's why he's a very strong supporter of the e-Stewards programme, which provides proof and assurance the waste is being handled properly.
"We want to see it up and running quickly," he said.
Westervelt says the programme will be thoroughly tested throughout 2009 and fully operational by 2010. In the meantime, the public can find participants in the programme who have pledged to meet its stringent standards at e-stewards.org, she said.
But what about electronics manufacturers' responsibility? In Europe they are obligated under law to take back their old products and recycle them properly. While no such law exists in Canada or the U.S., some TV companies such as Sony, LG and Samsung and a number of computer manufacturers such as Dell, Lenovo and Toshiba take back their products free of charge. Some others charge a fee.
"With the digital conversion, a huge number of TVs will end up our dumps and overseas," said Barbara Kyle of Electronics TakeBack Coalition.
The costs of handling and recycling usually outweigh the value of the materials recovered, so most companies do not want to take them back, Kyle said in an interview.
And there is the worry that those companies taking back their products will simply ship them to developing countries.
"We're trying to get manufacturers to sign a commitment to act as if the U.S. is part of the Basel Convention," said Puckett.
The 1992 Basel Convention was specifically set up to prevent transfer of hazardous waste, including e-waste, from developed to less developed countries. The U.S. is one of the few countries in the world that did not sign on to the convention.
"So far only Sony has signed the commitment but we're hoping others soon will," he said.
Some electronics manufacturers, especially those making low-end products, continue to bitterly oppose any export bans, as does the multi-billion-dollar scrap metal industry. As a result, Canada, the U.S. and Japan continue to oppose them as well or find ways around the Basel rules.
Canada gets much of Puckett's wrath for its duplicity in pushing for the Basel agreement, and then creating loopholes in its laws and failing to prosecute when violators are caught red-handed.
That leaves three or four ordinary people at BAN and few others to create a gold-standard recycling programme to solve the national embarrassment of exporting to toxic materials to faraway places that can't properly deal with it and are too poor to refuse it.
Puckett hopes the new U.S. administration under Barack Obama will be more responsible and awaken some sense of responsibility in other countries.
"It would be helpful if governments stepped up," he said.
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11 Comments so far
Show AllPakistan agrees to $7.6 billion IMF bailout
One more democracy has fallen to the Corporations - now they can trash Pakistan too.
This one IS bad news. Surely it is better
to live within your means rather than accept
such a huge loan, "with strings attached" too.
I wonder if they were pressured to accept it.
Plaudits to these Earth/People's-Well-being Conscious people.
Supporting their efforts helps clean up our earthly trash. And we gotta' clean it up.
Plastic wastes ... such as bags and the plastic containers some of us diligently recycle at the recycling centers evidently get shipped to countries such as India and other less prosperous countries. There the stuff is melted down in a plant owned by outsiders [from prosperous countries' corporations] and dumped in nearby fields owned by poor farmers who need the little money they are paid or dumped on so-called waste land. The multi-colored plastic glop hardens and forms a crust over the earth. A nasty-looking party cake. Plastic does not break down easily so there it remains as a smother cover.
The ocean is another great trash dump -- 40 per cent of our oceans are contaminated. Plastic widgets of small size are swallowed by sea creatures and birds and they sicken and die. Plastic bags float around and larger objects smother the plants of the sea floor.
I was brought up not to throw candy wrappers and other paper and stuff out the car window. That was a big No-No and if you did it, you were considered an inconsiderate, disrespectful slob.
We've got a window of time. It's time we stopped being inconsiderate, disrespectful slobs. Cleaning up our human trash must be part of new resolutions at a re-energized, restructured UN or at a major environmental alliance of many to all nations.
We are turning a page of a new book now, which the resistant stomp on with their dirty boots. They don't like to do anything that they think will cut into their profits, and they just don't get it.
We are the people we have been waiting for ... because we have incarnated and happen to live on this earth at this time. No accident you and I are here. It's our opportunity to create a better future and a responsible, aware way of doing things to benefit ALL people and all living things. And I certainly agree with Obama that we are our brothers' and sisters' keepers ... We are also supposed to be the collective stewards of the earth, whether e[lectronic waste]-stewards; p[lastic-waste]-stewards; n[uclear waste]-stewards; ph[armaceutical-waste]- stewards; ch[emical-waste]-stewards; etcetera. And new Green industries are apparent in all of this.
End of sermon ... but let's be together on this kind of effort and others that are life-affirming. It'll be lovely to look back someday and be able to say, WOW ... look what we together have wrought. The earth is breathing again.
peace/cm
Retooling of factories for recycling, shifting from 'planned obsolescence' as a market expander is an aesthic, social and engineering shift we cannot afford not to make.
The 'expansion' market notion has proven deadly in virtually all ways. Sustainable market is the opportunity to turn so much around. Small is beautiful remains a sound concept.
Until local manufacturing and repair comes back, expect these DISPOSING tragedies to get worse.
I am typing and sending this comment from an 11 year old, perfectly reliable, 450 mHz Dell. For 95% of homes and businesses, 10 year old machines are still perfectly adequate - and even older machines would be adequate if software and web pages weren't so laden with frilly commercial crap. Computers less than 10-15 years old should not be getting thrown out.
And, until I can be sure my TV can be recycled in a socially and environmentally responsible, I'm not replacing my 15 year old TV with an HDTV either.
I agree that the return of the local repair-person would really help. But, I've already heard that LCD TV's use fluorescent lamps for screen illumination that are deliberately designed to NOT be replaceable when they burn out - so the whole TV must be put in the trash.
The problem is that our capitalist economy, and our jobs and living standard really do depend increasingly rapid planned obsolescence, and increasing consumption of natural resources. Only a completely new economy will solve this problem - this type of economy has a name - it begins with the letter "S".
Jeevee
This type of (new) economy begins with an L : LOVE for all sentient beings on this planet!
We need mandated 100% accountability of the manufacturer for full costs of recycling all manufactured goods, with specific (five to ten year) timelines for requiring that all manufactured goods be 100% recyclable - genuinely recyclable, fully reprocessed into primary material, not simply turned into a one-time second-use product (like a plastic shirt made from water bottles) that is itself not recyclable.
That would be change i can believe in...
This E-waste is not going only to third world countries. Much of it is being buried in U.S. landfills all over the country, and I am as guilty of this as anyone.
Around three years ago, as someone who had purchased large quantities of computers, monitors, and peripherals, then fixed up many and sold them, I suddenly had a storage crisis as well as an obsolescence crisis. Most of my physical holdings suddenly had no commercial value. I had to take two pick-up truckloads of mostly crappy old 13-inch monitors to the local "recycling" dump. As I was offloading the monitors into the crushing facility (a process which should not have existed for computer monitors to begin with), I bemoaned to the facility operator my having no choice but to do this, and she agreed. I had given much thought and even research to trying to ship these quite functional items to third world countries and, earlier, I had tried to give them away to local school corporations (we have poverty here, too).
Whatever happened to "backward compatability" in the computer business? A huge problem here is the architecture of the "intelligent design" of the chips and their mathematical capabilities; thus for example you simply cannot run Windows XP on an old 286 or even a 386 regardless of the size of the RAM because they cannot hold the central processor required for the calculations. Worse, people like Bill Gates, alleged world benefactor, back around 1993, instead of addressing such compatability issues, actually made a strategic decision to fool his customer base into thinking that future editions of Windows would be compatible to 286 machines, in his then-successful attempt to defeat the Mac operating system, which latter was innately superior (OS 7.1). These are decisions made by Capitalist Tools who actually do consider the "externalities" and then decide to POLLUTE.
Today I have a roomful of old computers and a few monitors, most of them perfectly functional, and boxes full of old RAM chips, hard drives, floppy drives, etc., many containing actual gold plating as well as a host of other potentially valuable materials if only someone could figure out how to beneficially recycle them. I know they are potentially environmentally toxic (for example, by burning off the plastic insulation to sell the copper wiring...)
In any case, this is a HUGE HUGE HUGE environmental issue that goes to the fundamental issue of CAPITALIST ENTROPY. TAX the economic externalities not on the fraudulent "balance sheets" of these now madly profitable global crooks, or else you will find your genetic line incapable of progeny, poisoned by greed, fear, and, yes, stupidity.
We all want to be entertained, for example by streaming video not available a mere decade ago, but at what cost literally to the future of animal life on Planet Earth? Those highest on the Food Chain exist most precariously.
The toxic waste from "obsolete" electronics is far less regulated than the toxic waste of the nuclear industry, and yet it is from a long-term biological perspective, a big sister to it. If you want a Primer, study the life-cycle, such as it is, of the industrial use and disposal of cadmium. We really do need an entirely different so-called "Science of Economics," to bring in all those destructive "externalities," to the BOTTOM LINE of our very existence as a Species and an integral part of our Planet.
And my thanks to Sioux Rose for your nearly-logical interpretations of Astrology, which you make far less distant from Cosmology than I had previously realized.
We really do need a (bowel) Movement here, maybe even a massive "Shit-In"! Am I making some sense? If you think about your biological cycle and contemplate where your personal waste products go, for the greatest part NOT "recycled," you will begin to realize the enormity of the psycho-sociological Entropic Dilemma: As a Western Culture we do not want to discuss the ramifications of piss and shit. Literally and figuratively and metaphorically. Overcome this obstacle and there is hope.
Our human tendency towards Entropy must be replaced with a global fecundity. Enrich Mother Earth by whatever name you call her and she will return the favor. Rape her and you will be raped. Aphorisms often last longer than nations. What goes around comes around. We can change the Nature of our Epithets. We could cease being scatological in our Politics.
Probably, we need to "sequester" E-waste similarly to the way we are now sequestering Nuclear Power waste, while we figure out something better than Yucca Mountain.
What we are doing now isn't working.
Love to you all.
-30-
Last year the elementary school I do computer volunteer work for had an eWaste collection day with a couple of other schools. I knew there would be a lot of stuff and wasn't too surprised that we collected 20,000 pounds of CRT monitors. What was surprising is that I know all of the monitors I had contributed to this collection were perfectly good working units. Most of the computers were also in perfectly usable condition except for those where I had cannibalized them for spare parts. I started with this school when they had almost no computers and I was pulling the fans out of power supplies just to have spares to dumping perfectly good working units because we had no need or space for them anymore.
Part of the problem is the eternal push for new "stuff" even though the old stuff was fine. At an elementary school where the kids were using programs like Math Blaster, Reader Rabbit, and Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing we really don't need a duo-core Intel running at 3GHz with 2GB of RAM when the first generation 60MHz Pentium computers with 16MB of RAM were all that was required. Of course we don't have any computers that old but you get my point.
It's a mindset that must be changed. We have new parents come in and see that we have older equipment and no Apple computers and they are all aghast. But doing research on the Internet and writing stories with a word processor doesn't require an over powered computer or an over priced Apple.
Like all schools, just the donations we get from the public and businesses can overwhelm us. Every school I have done computer work for has a dungeon full of computer equipment and unless there are some teachers or parents capable of setting these up the equipment ends up at these eWaste collections.