April, 13 2011, 09:49am EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Ted Smith, International Campaign for Responsible Technology
+1-408- 242-6707; tsmith@igc.org
Jim Puckett, Basel Action Network
+1-206-652-5555; apex@seanet.com
UN Expert Meeting Charts the Way Forward on Hazardous Chemicals in Electronic Products
Historic meeting addresses entire lifecycle of electronics
SAN JOSE, CA
For the first time, more than 100 experts from around the world gathered in Vienna, Austria to make recommendations for a UN process on reducing and eliminating hazardous chemicals in the design, manufacturing, and end of life stages of electronic products. Concerns over toxic exposures during manufacturing, use, and recycling of electronic products provoked governments, the private sector, and public interest NGOs from around the world to call for the meeting at a global conference in 2009.
"Expectations were high for this meeting," said Joe DiGangi, IPEN, "and the results from the Vienna workshop provide a comprehensive roadmap that now need to be converted into actions."
Delegates developed key recommendations including: eliminating chemical hazards during design; phasing-out currently used hazardous substances; improving information transparency and flow; ensuring equal protection of workers, communities, and consumers; preventing export of hazardous electronic wastes from developed to developing countries; controlling export and import of near-end-of-life equipment; and taking the special needs of Small Island Developing States into account.
More than 160 governments had passed resolutions on the workshop topics at regional meetings of the Strategic Approach to International Chemicals Management (SAICM), with recommendations on green design, information transparency, protection of worker and community health, extended producer responsibility, addressing contaminated sites, and capacity building among others.
Recognizing that many challenges need to be resolved through improved design of new products, recommendations were made on eliminating chemicals of concern, full ingredient disclosure, identifying and implementing substitution strategies, green procurement and extended producer responsibility.
"The Vienna recommendations are a wake-up call for smarter designs that are inherently safer and which prevent harm from the beginning of the supply chain," said Mark Rossi, Research Director of Clean Production Action. "Consumers will demand greener designs and smart companies will listen."
The Korean Institute of Labor Safety and Health (Republic of Korea) and the International Labour Organization (Switzerland) presented information on how electronics manufacturing workers and nearby communities are currently being exposed to hazardous chemicals, the types of chemicals causing concern, recognition of adverse effects, controlling exposure, and how the SAICM agreement needs to address these issues.
"Protecting human health during production is more than posters and data sheets," said Amanda Hawes of Worksafe, based in Oakland, CA. "These new recommendations should begin a move toward a new manufacturing paradigm of true prevention and precaution which needs to be urgently implemented by large companies as well as subcontractors. We need a new model which truly protects workers and community residents." Additional workshop recommendations included promoting pollution prevention (including elimination of hazardous chemical use) and improving process designs; ensuring that subcontractors protect workers and surrounding communities; development of pollution reporting; and intensifying health monitoring for workers and residents.
Presenters on e-Waste included the Institute for Global Strategies (Japan), Shantou University Medical College (China), and the Basel Action Network (USA). Issues included the hazardous content of electronic waste, toxic exposures from electronic waste recycling in both developing and developed countries from metals and flame retardants, hazards of incineration and landfilling, the role of obsolescence and consumption in waste production, externalized cost, dumping of wastes from developed countries in developing countries, and the Basel Ban amendment among others.
"More than a decade of dumping toxic e-waste needs to stop," said Jim Puckett of Basel Action Network in Seattle, WA. "The Vienna recommendations provide a package of solutions including enforcement against illegal trafficking in e-waste, clean-up of damage done, and free take back programs available globally to consumers."
The international workshop on hazardous substances within the life cycle of electronic and electrical products was organized by the Secretariats to the Basel and Stockholm Conventions and the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) which hosted the meeting in Vienna. The workshop is part of the Strategic Approach to International Chemicals Management (SAICM), a global strategy and policy framework to establish sound management of hazardous chemicals and wastes by 2020. Delegates included more than 30 government representatives from both manufacturing countries and countries affected by electronic wastes along with representatives from the private sector and public interest NGOs. The Workshop recommendations will be provided for consideration in SAICM regional meetings, a working group meeting in August, and at the 3rd International Conference on Chemicals Management in 2012.
The UN organizers invited key resource people to begin the meeting with presentations to inform delegates of current issues. Soon, presentations as well as the recommendations should be posted here: https://www.basel.int/meetings/wrks-eew-unido/index.html
Basel Action Network's mission is to champion global environmental health and justice by ending toxic trade, catalyzing a toxics-free future, and campaigning for everyone's right to a clean environment.
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A report published Wednesday found that the number of people around the world suffering acute hunger surged to 282 million last year amid the intensifying climate crisis and military conflicts—including Israel's assault on Gaza—that have further enriched weapons manufacturers.
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The 3-2 vote along party lines to reclassify broadband as a public service under Title II of the Communications Act came seven months after FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel announced the push in the wake of the U.S. Senate confirming Commissioner Anna Gomez.
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"The FCC's vote today returns the internet to the American people."
Free Press co-CEO Craig Aaron declared that "everyone should celebrate today's FCC vote."
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"Big cable and phone companies won't be able to pick and choose what any of us can say or see online. Net neutrality is a guarantee that these companies will carry our data across the internet without undue interference or unreasonable discrimination," he emphasized. "This is what democracy should look like: Public servants responding to public sentiment, taking steps to protect just and reasonable services and free expression, and showing that the government is capable of defending the public interest."
Michael Copps, a former FCC commissioner and current Common Cause special adviser, was similarly enthusiastic, saying that "if I weren't out of the country today, I would be personally at the FCC jumping up and down, saluting the majority for reinstituting the network neutrality rules that were so foolishly eliminated by the previous commission."
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Jenna Leventoff, senior policy counsel at the ACLU, also piled on the praise, proclaiming that "today marks the last day that internet service providers can continue to put profit over people."
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While several environmental groups and climate advocates praised the new rules, others pointed out that they still exclude emissions from existing gas-powered plants, which are currently the nation's leading source of electricity. A rule on these plants has been pushed into the future, likely until after the November election, which means they may not be regulated for years if pro-fossil fuel Republican Donald Trump retakes the White House.
"We don't have time for this half-assed BS, EPA!" Genevieve Guenther, founding director of End Climate Silence, wrote on social media. "Later is too late."
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Sunrise Movement communications director Stevie O'Hanlon called the regulations a "game-changer."
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"The age of unbridled climate pollution from power plants is over," NRDC president and CEO Manish Bapna said in a statement. "These standards cut carbon emissions, at last, from the single largest industrial source. They fit hand-in-glove with the clean energy incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act to make sure we cut our carbon footprint. They will reduce other dangerous pollutants that foul the air we breathe and threaten our health."
"Congressional Republicans are already parroting the oil and gas lobby's talking points criticizing the rules."
Beyond fossil fuel control, the other three rules would strengthen toxic metals standards by 67% and mercury standards by 70%, cut coal wastewater pollution by more than 660 million pounds per year, and establish for the first time regulations on the disposal of coal ash in certain areas.
"The suite of power plant rules announced by EPA Administrator Regan represents a significant step forward in the fight for ambitious climate action and environmental justice," Chitra Kumar, the managing director of UCS' Climate and Energy Program, said in a statement. "Together, these rules help address a long-standing legacy of public health and environmental harms stemming from coal-fired power plants that scientific studies show have disproportionately hurt communities of color and low-income communities."
However, the groups also said the administration must move to regulate existing gas plants.
UCS' McNamara said that "as critical as these carbon rules are, the agency's job is not yet done."
"EPA must tackle carbon emissions from existing gas-fired power plants—soon to be the largest source of power sector carbon emissions—and it must look beyond carbon to reckon with the full suite of health-harming pollution these plants disproportionately and inequitably force on the communities that surround them," McNamara added. "When all the heavy costs of fossil fuel-fired power plants are tallied, it's unequivocally clear that clean energy presents the just and necessary path ahead."
NRDC's Bapna agreed, saying, "Existing gas-fired power plants are massive carbon emitters. They kick out other dangerous pollution that most hurts low-income communities and people of color. The EPA must cut all of that pollution—and soon—in a way that confronts the climate crisis and protects frontline communities."
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"Congressional Republicans are already parroting the oil and gas lobby's talking points criticizing the rules," Sunrise's O'Hanlon said. "They're making clear whose side they are on. They'd rather please the oil and gas CEOs who back their campaign than save tens of thousands of lives."
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