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By Kristen Green, Union Tribune

CALIFORNIA, 7 July 2002 -- Electronic waste from old computers, TVs creates heaping mess

Technology-crazed Californians rush out to purchase the latest flat-screen televisions and souped-up laptops as soon as they hit the market.

But for every upgraded model proudly carried through the front door, an outdated one gets discarded. Those that aren't stuffed into a closet often wind up abandoned on a dark road, trucked across the border to Mexico or shipped to China.

The disposal of e-waste – electronics that contain hazardous materials such as lead and mercury – is the most perplexing refuse issue facing the nation. It is particularly troublesome in California, where 10,000 computers and televisions become obsolete every day.

Last year, the state banned televisions and computer screens from landfills, joining only Massachusetts in designating those items as hazardous waste. The monitors' cathode ray tubes, known as CRTs, contain high concentrations of lead and other toxic metals.

But diverting e-waste from landfills is only a small step toward solving a burgeoning problem.

There's no clear plan – not in California, not anywhere – about what should be done with the abandoned TVs and computers.

Several local businesses offer to recycle obsolete TVs and computers for $10 to $30 apiece. And for the past three years, the city of San Diego has held a recycling day, accepting obsolete computers and televisions for free.

But where does the e-waste they collect end up?

The discarded computers and TVs are often shipped to developing countries, where the toxic waste leaks into waterways or contaminates landfills. The electronics contain mercury, barium and cadmium, which can cause health problems such as lung damage and brain swelling if leaked into the air, water and soil.

A huge portion of e-waste, perhaps 50 percent to 80 percent, is sent to India, Pakistan, China and other countries overseas, according to a report this year by five environmental organizations.

And some of California's castoffs end up crossing the Mexican border, where they are discarded along rural roads or unloaded in Tijuana's enormous dump.

Ideally, the e-waste would be recycled domestically, environmental experts say. Monitors would be dismantled, and then the components – plastics, glass, metals and circuit boards – would be separated and sent to recycling plants. Down the road, they'd be used to make new electronics.

But industry experts say there aren't nearly enough recycling companies to dismantle all the computers and TVs Californians discard because, until recently, there wasn't much demand for the service. Plus, it's expensive because the materials often must be shipped out of state, where companies are doing the recycling.

For now, the local governments get stuck with the tab.

"They're understandably upset about it," said Michael Paparian, a member of the California Integrated Waste Management Board. "It's a huge cost they're facing."

Two proposals before the California Legislature would help foot the bill for recycling. One would require manufacturers to pay a fee of up to $30 for every TV or computer they sell, which would be used to subsidize a recycling program.

Tracking the waste

This year, the city of San Diego has spent $51,000 on recycling programs intended to keep e-waste out of landfills. Even so, a large number of the computers and TVs may not actually be recycled.

The city offers a couple of options: Residents can take the waste to the city's annual recycling day events, where disposal is free, or pay about 60 cents a pound to get rid of it at the Miramar Landfill's recycling center.

This year the Jan. 5 recycling day – the third offered by the city – brought in 76 tons of computers and televisions. Other forms of e-waste also were dropped off, including cellular phones, Palm Pilots and VCRs.

City officials have billed the annual events as the most successful in the country. But the city is under investigation by a state environmental agency for the way it handled the computers and TVs at the most recent event.

Nearly 3,000 vehicles snaked slowly through the Qualcomm Stadium parking lot that Saturday, as drivers waited up to an hour for 140 volunteers to unload their trunks and hand them a tax-deductible receipt for recycling.

Video footage of the event shows the volunteers rough-handled the monitors, hurling them into a large steel bin and imperiling their fragile screens, which contain as much as 27 percent lead. The lead leaks into the environment when monitors break. Inhalation of lead particles can cause breathing difficulties, coughing, choking and irritation of the nose, throat and respiratory tract, and children who ingest lead can suffer from impaired mental development or stunted growth.

"That's not the way the stuff needs to be handled, and frankly, it's illegal," said Mark Murray, executive director of Californians Against Waste in Sacramento.

Questions have been raised about where the broken monitors wound up. Witnesses from RMD Technologies Inc., a San Diego company that unsuccessfully bid for the Jan. 5 recycling day contract, say the monitors were hauled off in an uncovered bin. But Stephen Grealy, the recycling program supervisor, said he doesn't have evidence of that.

Officials at RMD complained to the state Department of Toxic Substances Control, prompting the investigation. RMD has also alleged that the city didn't fairly award the contracts for the recycling day event, said co-owner Rob Spence.

City attorneys have determined the contracts were awarded to the lowest-cost, most-responsive bidders, Grealy said.

Spence also raised questions about how computers and televisions were disposed of after the event. Both Goodwill Industries and NxtCycle, the companies contracted to run the Jan. 5 recycling day, claimed in their bids for the contract that the e-waste would be recycled or reused. The city didn't require the companies to be more specific.

Officials at NxtCycle, a Phoenix company, have said they ship the monitors to a Utah prison to be disassembled. Later the parts are sent to the East Coast to be smelted.

But those answers don't satisfy environmentalists, who criticize the use of prison labor, saying it prevents a legitimate recycling industry from developing.

The auction route

Goodwill's local CEO, Mike Rowan, says the nonprofit received the bin in question and no monitors were broken.

He said 25 of the computers it received from the city event were in working order; the rest were sold as computer parts or were recycled.

But San Diego's 15 Goodwill stores don't stock computers or TVs. In fact, they won't even accept them as donations anymore. Goodwill records show employees no longer refurbish computers, either.

"You have to pay someone to take it away," Rowan said. "No one will buy it."

Instead, the nonprofit sends them down to the border to be auctioned.

Seven days a week, just after 10 a.m., dozens of people pull up to a Goodwill auction yard in San Ysidro. Among the range of household products auctioners sell off are bins of used computer parts.

Moises Aranda of Tijuana regularly bids on the e-waste so he can refurbish computers. One recent morning, Aranda and Martin Collins of Bonita paid $100 for three bins of keyboards, printers, monitors and hard drives. They split the bins' contents in the parking lot.

"It was basically trash," Collins said.

Aranda left the electronics he didn't want in a bin in the parking lot. When he got to Tijuana, he said, he'd chuck the computers that don't work – and the ones he can't use – in the trash cans outside his home. The garbage is collected once a week and delivered to Tijuana's huge town dump.

"We know most of that stuff is hazardous junk," Murray said. "Goodwill should recognize that. It's their responsibility to make sure they're handing it over to a legitimate handler.

What's more, county environmental investigators have found Goodwill was sending the computer screens and TVs left in the San Ysidro parking lot after the auction to a recycling company that doesn't even recycle CRTs. But the county didn't see a need to cite the nonprofit.

In an interview Wednesday, Rowan defended the sales of CRTs, saying if computers that don't work are being sold, "it's not supposed to be happening." He said all monitors are tested first to ensure they're usable.

But later in the day, he said Goodwill would no longer auction the computers to the public. Instead, he said, he'll sell them only to legitimate computer refurbishers on this side of the border.

Going overseas

If San Diego's recycling days don't seem an environmentally friendly way to dispose of e-waste, it isn't clear if the other recycling option offered by the city is much better. It may also result in e-waste being sent abroad.

The city suggests that residents take televisions or monitors to Miramar Landfill, where they can be unloaded at the recycling center for 60 cents a pound.

But it isn't known what happens to the televisions and computers that are dropped off.

Gary McGrath, general manager for the Allan Company, which runs the recycling center, originally declined to say where the company sends its CRTs. But Tuesday, he said all the computers and TVs are sent to another local company, IMS Recycling.

McGrath's business card describes the company as "exporters," and the company Web site lists offices in Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, India, Pakistan, the Philippines, Singapore, Indonesia, China and Mexico.

IMS Recycling, which also accepts CRTs from the public for a fee, has said it ships waste to the Philippines, China and Pakistan, according to a booklet published in May by the San Diego Regional Technology Alliance, a nonprofit corporation that provides assistance to the city's technology community. But on Wednesday, IMS officials said the company ships the CRTs to three domestic companies that are certified recyclers.

Kip Sturdevan, the city of San Diego's recycling program manager, said he worries about where the computer and TVs end up, but said "it's not the municipality's responsibility."

"Why should the government be responsible for the end use of this material?" he said.

When Jim Puckett, a Seattle environmental activist, visited China in December to document how much of America's e-waste was being shipped there, he witnessed computers and TVs being burned or dumped in rice fields, irrigation canals and waterways.

"We're saving our own soil to contaminate the soil of China," said Puckett, who wrote the 54-page report for the Basel Action Network, "Exporting Harm: The High-Tech Trashing of Asia."

Reading labels from the piles of discarded electronics, Puckett made a disturbing discovery: A few of the computers were from a California school district and a state hospital.

"The people that deal with the state's computers" – the Department of General Services – "are quite troubled by that, too," said Paparian, the waste management board member.

The state has since changed its policy, Paparian said, and sends its computers to an Atwater prison to be dismantled, a decision that environmentalists have criticized.

While Puckett was visiting the Guiyu area of China, he witnessed children smashing computer monitors to retrieve copper coils worth 25 cents to 40 cents. He watched women, hunched over grills, cooking one circuit board after another to mine copper and tiny amounts of gold. And he saw the computers' remnants being dumped in the Liangjiang River – where lead levels are 190 times higher than the World Health Organization's standard for drinking water.

But most Americans have no idea what's happening with the computers and TVs they abandon, Puckett said.

He criticized waste companies that won't reveal what happens to the TVs and computers.

"I should be able to know exactly where my waste goes," he said. "It's not a trade secret."

Puckett, coordinator of the Seattle-based BAN, is proposing a pledge for "recyclers," asking them to commit to using domestic recycling plants.

"If you dump it willy-nilly, you're going to contaminate a lot of people," he said.

Looking for an answer

There are few businesses that actually recycle computers, according to Murray, of Californians Against Waste. Because computer recycling is an unregulated industry, many sham recyclers have gotten into the business.

They are paid cash to dispose of the e-waste, and as an afterthought, find a cheap way to unload it, said Murray, who is lobbying the state Legislature to regulate the e-waste recycling industry.

Senate Bill 1523 would require TV and computer manufacturers to pay the cost of recycling upfront so consumers can recycle them for free. For example, at a rate of $20 per unit, the fee could raise as much as $160 million annually.

The California Manufacturer's and Technology Association opposes the bill, which would be difficult to enforce with the numerous out-of-state suppliers, said Dorothy Rothrock, vice president of government relations.

A second proposal, Senate Bill 1619, requires manufactures to label all electronics that contain CRTs as hazardous materials, and to include information about how the materials can be recycled when they're obsolete.

"We've just got to make it easy," said Murray, who believes as many as 6 million computers and TVs are sitting in storage in California.

Meanwhile, California officials are involved in a national dialogue about e-waste recycling known as the National Electronic Products Stewardship Initiative. The group is considering three places to put the responsibility – manufacturers, local government or a third party.

But a solution is at least a year away, and in the meantime, environmentalists such as Puckett are encouraging Californians to hold onto their computers and TVs.

The state's move to ban the dumping of e-waste has been hailed as a landmark decision, but it hasn't yet had the desired result.

"They've tried to do the right thing," he said, "but it's had a perverse effect."

Kristen Green: (619) 542-4576; kristen.green@uniontrib.com

Copyright 2002 Union-Tribune Publishing Co.