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Inter Press Service

WASHINGTON, 26 February 2002   -- Huge quantities of scrap electronics are being exported from the United States to China, Pakistan and India, where the waste is causing environmental and health problems, according to an investigation by five environmental organizations. Up to 80 percent of all electronic waste collected for recycling in the United States actually ends up on container ships bound for Asia. There, the scrap -- including millions of tons of computer monitors and circuit boards -- is processed in operations harmful to human health and the environment, the groups say. The watchdog organizations, in a joint report, say they witnessed open burning of plastics and wires, riverbank acid works to extract gold from electronics components, melting and burning of toxic soldered circuit boards, and the cracking and dumping of toxic lead-laden cathode ray tubes. Tons of electronic waste bearing labels and identification tags from the United States are dumped along rivers, on open fields, and in irrigation canals, say the groups. "They call this recycling but it's really dumping by another name," says Jim Puckett, coordinator of the U.S.-based Basel Action Network, one of the groups that authored the report. The organization is trying to enforce the Basel Convention, a 1989 United Nations treaty to limit hazardous waste exports. Other organizations involved in the investigation include U.S.-based Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, Toxics Link India, Greenpeace China, and Pakistan's Society for the Conservation and Protection of the Environment. Their 51-page report, "Exporting Harm: The High-Tech Trashing of Asia," focuses mainly on Guiyu, in China's Guangdong Province. Electronic processing centers in the region employ 100,000 low- income migrant workers to break apart obsolete computers primarily imported from North America. The main casualty of the growth in electronics processing has been drinking water. The groundwater in Guiyu has become so polluted since 1995 that well water is no longer fit to drink and fresh water now has to be trucked in from 30 kilometers away, according to the investigators, who visited the region in December. In one part of Guiyu, villagers burn electronic wires to recover copper. The report says it is extremely likely that due to the presence of PVC (poly vinyl chloride) or flame retardants in wire insulation, the emissions and ashes from such burning will contain high levels of dioxins and furans, two toxic pollutants linked to cancer and other health problems. In some parts of Guiyu, says the report, workers dismantle printers and toner cartridges without any protective clothing or respiratory equipment. "The process created constant clouds of toner that billowed around the workers and was routinely inhaled," says the report. The employed workers are mostly former farmers, including women and children, who receive an average wage of $1.50 per day. Investigators found similar electronic processing situations in Karachi, Pakistan and New Delhi, India. No special equipment or protective clothing of any kind is used, and all the work is done by bare hand, says the report. Interviews with workers in Karachi show that the general public is "completely unaware of the hazards of the materials that are being processed and the toxins they contain," says the report.

Officials with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have acknowledged that a large portion of the nation's electronics waste is exported. But since there is no systematic reporting of exports of such waste, there are no precise estimates of the amounts of scrap headed to developing nations for reprocessing. U.S. industry and government officials have fought an initiative by the European Union that aims to hold electronics corporations responsible for the products they manufacture. Known as the European Commission Directive on Waste from Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE), the legislation would require manufacturers to pay to take computers and appliances back and safely recycle or reprocess them. Japan has taken similar steps to require manufacturers to take back their products at the end of their so-called life cycle. Since WEEE surfaced several years ago, the American Electronic Association, fearing for the corporate bottom line, teamed up with the office of the U.S. Trade Representative to launch a major offensive against the proposal. The environmentalists' report urges the United States to reverse its position and follow Europe's example. "Rather than sweeping our E-waste crisis out the back door 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," says Ted Smith, executive director of Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, an advocacy group named after the region in California famous for its computer and related industries.

Smith estimates there will be 315 million obsolete computers in the United States by 2004. "Consumers in the United States have been the principle beneficiaries of the high-tech revolution and we simply can't allow the resulting high environmental price to be pushed off onto others," he says. The report notes that the United States is the only industrialized nation that has not ratified the Basel Convention. Copyright (c) 2002 IPS-Inter Press Service. All Rights Reserved. -0- Copyright 2002