photo by (Flickr CC)

Minerals used in electronic devices such as mobile phones and laptops are becoming increasingly scarce. Despite this, large quantities are thrown into landfills when such high-tech products are considered obsolete, something that unfortunately occurs with increasing frequency (see Moore’s Law).

The European Parliament is proposing stricter standards for the recycling of e-waste.

From a Deutsche Welle report:

The Parliament wants member countries to be collecting at least 85 percent of electronic waste by 2016. Depending on the type of device, it wants a reuse quota of 55 to 75 percent. It also wants to introduce stricter export regulations to hinder illegal waste exports. Those could require companies to prove they are exporting functioning electronic devices instead of waste products.

While Europe exports huge amounts of electronic waste to developing countries for recycling, the European Parliament would also like to export its safer recycling standards. This could be a challenge to enforce or even inspect.

It’s also a challenge to recycle electronic waste, as many who have tried to recycle a laptop battery will know.

What’s worse is that some of these rare earth elements used in electronics are conflict minerals sourced from warzones in countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo, where profits from mining minerals such as coltan, cassiterite, wolframite, as well as gold, fuel bloody fighting. Meanwhile miners work as forced labor or for a few dollars a day and at great personal risk due to unsafe conditions. Many of the miners are also children.

Something to consider next time when you think you just “have” to have the latest iPhone.

Image source: Alex Hofford Photography

“The Choice Between Poverty and Poison”

Parts of China are awash in electronic waste, or “e-waste”; a rising tide of circuit boards, glass monitors and other bits and bobs of computers that we don’t want anymore due to their having become passé and no longer suited to our hyper-modern, technology and consumer-driven lifestyles. Chinese towns, such as the now infamous Guiyu in the south of the country, are dedicated e-waste recycling centers, dominated, darkened and scarred by the toxic trash industry. In very poor and basic conditions, metals such as lead, copper and gold are extracted from recycled e-waste via unsafe, virtually medieval methods, which release noxious chemicals into the atmosphere. Workers bodies are also directly exposed via contact with their skin and by breathing the poisonous vapors, smoke and fumes into their poorly protected lungs when “re-smelting” and otherwise working with the electronic refuse.

According to the documentary short about Guiyu, ‘Electronic Trash Village – China’ by independent producers Journeyman Pictures, a UN Report states that 70% of the world’s electronic waste is sent to China and the way this waste is processed and recycled is causing untold amounts of pollution, contamination of water and soil, and poisoning those who work in this industry. These workers are paid what would seem to most of us to be laughably low wages. For them, however, the money is relatively good and can mean a difference between poverty and a level of prosperity that they have never before experienced. Unfortunately it can also mean, as stated in a similar report by CBS Television’s investigative journalism program 60 Minutes, “a choice between poverty and poison.” Many choose the latter, at least for as long as they can stand it.

China, for its own part, has started to regulate the recycling industry and environmental pollution, but pressure from international businesses and the country’s mad dash towards economic and industrial superpower status makes this regulation difficult.

Image source: Alex Hofford Photography

From the supply side end of the spectrum, the ‘Trash Village’ documentary states that refuse export has been legalized in the United States, the largest exporter of trash. Of course, things aren’t that simple. Other sources, while not refuting this claim, show that the U.S. imports even more waste than it exports, including toxic waste from factories in Mexico. Furthermore, some of the problem isn’t what the law allows or prohibits, but that many companies are exporting and importing e-waste illegally, something that is both profitable and surprisingly easy for them to do.

Watch the full 60 Minutes report, including footage and interviews with the people of Guiyu – ‘The Electronic Wasteland’ and read ‘Following the Trail of Toxic E-Waste: 60 Minutes Follows America’s Toxic Electronic Waste As It Is Illegally Shipped To Become China’s Dirty Secret’

Watch CBS Videos Online

Additional material from the 60 Minutes report:
A Walk Around Guiyu
Roughed Up

Neither is this just an international problem. In America, the state of California (known for being the country’s most environmentally progressive state) exports huge amounts of e-waste. But what’s more is that California recycling firms ship an abundance of toxic computer waste to the neighboring state of Arizona, according to a CBS Television report from April 24, 2009.

Solution?

Image source: Alex Hofford Photography

Fortunately some companies – in the interest of Ecology, human welfare and of course corporate identity – are ensuring that their waste disposal practices are more ethical than the law requires of them. Dell Computers for one has recently formally banned the export of its own e-waste to developing countries, citing environmental and worker-safety concerns. Dell hopes that by publicly denouncing this kind of behavior, it might influence other corporations to follow suit, despite what arguably ineffectual and inadequate laws may require.

But this may not fundamentally even be a problem of where waste is shipped and how it is processed, but rather a deeper question about waste production. As China makes more money via e-waste recycling (among other industries), its population’s standard of living goes up, inevitably creating a growing demand for electronic products of their own, and so the problem of e-waste spirals. Production of computers, iPods and similar gadgets has also been moving into China and so the journey of e-waste becomes more circular, with pollution from both production and recycling (not to mention shipping) increasingly coming from the same place. Meanwhile Americans and Europeans pat themselves on the back for throwing a 2 year old flat screen monitor packed with nitrogen trifluoride (a greenhouse gas said to have 17,000 times the climate impact of CO₂) or an old analog TV set full of lead into a local green-colored recycling bin, ultimately destined for China or other developing countries. It seems, yet again, that a little more concentration on Reduce and Reuse needs to be stressed in the holy environmentalist trinity of the three ‘R’s, as Recycle isn’t quite the righteous saint we once thought it was. In fact, recycling may indeed be the devil in disguise and (to perhaps over-milk the metaphor) China is dancing with the devil in the pale moonlight. And make no mistake; it could be largely China who ends up having to pay the ferryman at the end of this dangerous journey across its own – poisoned ­­– River Styx.

By Graham Land

Additional resources:
Companies With Operations in Washington Illegally Export Electronic Waste to Hong Kong
Time Magazine Photo Essay: China’s Electronic Waste Village
Electronics Take Back Coalition
Swiss e-waste guide

Lead image source: istockphoto.com

Image Source: Screen capture from video.

In an effort to partake in more sustainable and green practices, this year’s Olympic medals are made from e-waste.

E-waste is another term for electronic waste. It includes everything from laptops to televisions to mp3 players and so forth. The medal making process started with the extracting of gold, silver and copper in 2006, by the Teck Resources mining company. The company plans to process 15,000 tons of e-waste this year—a major increase from the 2,100 tons processed 4 years ago.

Designed by Omer Arbel and Corrine Hunt, the medals include imagery of Vancouver’s coast and orca whales. You can check out a video about the design here. To win a medal made of recycled materials may be a first in the Olympics and some athletes are perfectly happy about that. US speed skater, Katherine Reutter, said “I would be extremely proud to have a medal made of recycled metals”.

Along with medals made from e-waste, this year’s Winter Olympics include sustainable venues, with things like waste heat reuse at the Whistler Sliding Center and rainwater capture and reuse at the Richmond Olympic Oval. You can also find sustainability reports, carbon management information, and other information on the VANOC website.

By Heidi Marshall