space Press Releases, News Stories

By Robert Weissman, Multinational Monitor

March 2002 -- Dragging an electronic document into the trash bin on your computer screen may efficiently help clean up your desktop in the virtual world, but it does not do anything to address the growing problem of electronic waste in the real world.

The 1998 volume of electronics waste from the United States alone totaled 5 to 7 million tons, according to the best estimates, and is growing at a rate as high as 5 percent a year. E-waste includes household appliances such as refrigerators, air conditioners and televisions, but is increasing at such a fast pace because of discarded computers and computer-related accessories (such as printers and printer toner cartridges).

Disposal of electronics waste is complicated, because many of the more than 1,000 different substances in electronics waste streams are hazardous. That makes landfilling of e-waste in the United States illegal in many circumstances. As a result, efforts at computer and e-waste recycling are proliferating.

But e-waste recycling is largely a sham, or worse, according to a February report issued by Basel Action Network (BAN) and Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition (SVTC) with support from Toxics Link India, Greenpeace China and SCOPE (Pakistan).

Most alarmingly, the report documents that millions of discarded computer units intended for “recycling” are being exported from the United States to Asia, where they are processed in operations that pose severe threats to the health of workers, surrounding communities and the natural environment. Among the hazardous substances in e-waste are lead (present in very large amounts in computer monitors), cadmium, mercury, hexavalent chromium, plastics including polyvinyl chloride (PVC, which can form dioxins when burned), brominated flame retardants, barium, beryllium, toners and phosphor.

The report, “ Exporting Harm: The High-Tech Trashing of Asia,” features an on-the-ground investigation of e-waste recycling operations in China, India and Pakistan. The investigation focused on an area known as Guiyu, in Guangdong Province, in southeast China and four hours drive northeast of Hong Kong, where approximately 100,000 poor migrant workers are employed breaking apart and processing obsolete computers imported primarily from North America.

“We found a cyber-age nightmare,” says Jim Puckett, coordinator of BAN. “They call this recycling, but it’s really dumping by another name.”

Recycling Economics

Recycling computers is not a profitable business, because the value of the materials in a computer is small. In an old computer, according to Time Magazine, five pounds of steel might be worth $.25, the central processing unit with gold tips (and assuming the chip cannot be reused) might be worth $1.00; the motherboard, with gold, silver and copper connectors, might be worth $2.00; cable could be worth $.09; the hard drive with aluminum might be worth $.10; and the monitor yoke which can be 60 percent copper may be worth $.80.

As a result of the low value of computer raw materials, consumers must typically pay recyclers. Large commercial users in the United States must rely on recycling, because the hazardous materials in computers make it illegal for those disposing of large numbers to dump them in the normal waste stream. For individuals, throwing the computer in the trash — where it is likely to end up in a landfill — is often preferable to paying $10 to $30 for recycling.

Thanks to the economics of computer recycling, those computers that do go to “recyclers” in the United States more often than not are designated for export. Due to lower wage costs and more lax occupational and environmental standards, recycling costs in China can be as little as one tenth the cost in the United States.

“Most companies that call themselves recyclers of computers and e-waste often do more waste trading than actual waste recycling,” notes the report. “Informed industry insiders have indicated that around 80 percent of what comes through their doors will be exported to Asia, and 90 percent of that has been destined for China.”

Ash Covers the Ground

In China, the Basel Action Network investigators found that the Guiyu area has been transformed in recent years from a rice-growing community to an e-waste processing center. Residents no longer drink the local water in Guiyu, which they say has become foul tasting. Instead, they rely on water that is trucked in from a town 30 kilometers away.

The recycling business in Guiyu is conducted by small-scale operators, which purchase single truckloads of waste — mostly originating from North America — from a nearby port. The BAN investigators found very low-technology operations dismantling the residue from a high-tech society.

In one village, “residents make their living entirely by burning [computer] wires to recover copper,” according to the report. “The village exists in a landscape of black ash residue which covers the ground and the houses of the village. The burning always takes place at night, indicating that local authorities have likely frowned upon the black smoke plumes.” The report concludes that it is extremely likely that the burning of the wires is creating dioxins and other contaminants, which are polluting the air and nearby fish ponds.

The most environmentally hazardous part of the recycling operations, according to the report, involves the desoldering of circuit boards. Women and girls heat the boards over open flames, pulling out electronic chips from a molten lead-tin solder. The exposure to the solder fumes is likely to be very damaging to workers’ health, the report concludes. After the chips are removed (with some separated for re-use, and other destined for acid chemical stripping), the boards go to large-scale burning or acid recovery operations.

“Whole riverbanks were seen full of charred circuit boards reduced to blackened fiberglass,” according to the report. “This final burning process is bound to emit substantial quantities of harmful heavy metals, dioxins, beryllium.”

Other dangerous processes included manual toner sweeping, where workers scraped out residual toner; cracking of cathode ray tubes from computer monitors, with lead-laden monitor glass simply dumped; plastic chipping and melting with no respiratory protections for workers; and massive amounts of material dumping.

Whose Responsibility?

Under the Basel Convention, the shipment of hazardous waste — and the report argues that much of e-waste must be considered hazardous under the treaty — from rich to developing countries is banned. The United States, however, has not signed the treaty, and is not governed by its terms.

“To our horror,” says BAN’s Puckett, “we discovered that rather than banning [e-waste], the United States government is actually encouraging this ugly trade in order to avoid finding real solutions to the massive tide of obsolete computer waste generated in the U.S. daily.”

Not only has the United States refused to be bound by the Basel Convention, it has exempted e-waste from its own export laws, because the material is claimed to be destined for recycling.

While calling for the United States to immediately join the global ban on export of hazardous wastes to developing countries, the report locates the ultimate source of the problem in the rapid obsolescence of computer equipment, and the failure to hold computer makers responsible for handling discarded computers. Placing such responsibility on the computer makers — as the European Union is beginning to require — will give the industry incentives to design for longevity, upgradeability, repair and re-use, and to decrease the use of toxic inputs.

“Consumers in the U.S. have been the principal beneficiaries of the high-tech revolution and we simply can’t allow the resulting high environmental price to be pushed off onto others,” says Ted Smith, executive director of the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition. “Rather than sweeping our e-waste crisis out the backdoor by exporting it to the poor of the world, we have got to address it square in the face and solve it at home, in this country, at its manufacturing source.”