The mountains of discarded computers, cell phones and other electronic devices dumped off in the developing world are slated to triple in size over the next decade.
The plastic encasings and metallic insides that make electronics work turn into non-biodegradable e-waste once they’re tossed out and often exported to China, India and developing nations.
As a result, an e-waste industry has developed as people mine the discarded devices for their valuable metallic innards, including gold, silver and copper.
But toxic elements, such as brominated flame retardants and lead in circuit boards, batteries and other components, along with caustic acids and burning methods used to dismantle the old electronics, pose serious environmental and health risks for the communities that subsist on the e-waste industry.
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“My view on this is if you look at the developing world, we have a smoking gun environmental problem,” said Eric Williams, an economist at Arizona State University who has studied e-waste and electronics recycling.
At the same time, eradicating that environmental problem could be economically hazardous to those whose livelihoods rely on e-waste for either extracting valuables or refurbishing equipment.
“It gets complicated ethically,” Williams explained. “On the one hand, we want to show (pictures of e-waste dumps) because we want to show people that there’s an environmental issue that needs to be addressed. On the other hand, it has been interpreted that the way we’ll solve this environmental issue is to throw these people out of work.”
For that reason, Williams has proposed paying e-waste businesses to recycle circuit boards, wires and other dangerous e-waste elements rather than outlawing e-waste exports to developing countries, which the U.S. Congress has proposed.
“I like this option because it doesn’t throw people out of work, and rather than banning something and have a black market develop, it’s giving people an incentive not to do it,” Williams said.
In fact, not all the abandoned electronics coming out the United States end up at dumps.
For instance, a study Williams conducted found that 80 percent of old computers exported to Peru were refurbished and resold, rather than dismantled.
Moreover, 23 states have also instituted electronics recycling laws to stop e-waste before it starts.
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“(E-waste) certainly is something we need to be concerned about in the U.S.,” said Jason Linnell, executive director of the National Center for Electronics Recycling. “There are a number of very qualified, legitimate recyclers in the U.S. that can handle any type of electronic devices, but there certainly are some unscrupulous actors that try to take in old devices and break them down in unsafe ways.”
However, states have taken different approaches, with some instituting tax fees and others putting the onus on the manufacturers, Linnell says there isn’t a clear-cut solution for best handling electronics disposal and recycling.
“There certainly should be a clear set of rules about exports of electronic devices and right now we sort of have a patchwork of rules,” Linnell said.
Linnell also is part of a United Nations-led initiative to address the environmental problems posed by e-waste and develop effective recycling technologies.
Considering that developing countries are poised to generate twice the e-waste as developed ones by 2025, it’ll clearly take a global effort to solve the complex environmental, economic and health issues embodied by those piles of dismembered DVD players, televisions and laptops in poor villages.
“Definitely, it’s a global issue and…the different lessons each country has learned in implementing e-waste policies and programs should be applied anywhere (electronics) recycling is taking place,” Linnell said.
Credit: iStockphoto
Tags: Cell Phones, Computer Monitors, Computers, Conservation, Desktop Computers
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