The fastest growing waste stream flowing into landfills today: e-Wasteby Loren Weber Nearly every American adult remembers the demise of the VHS cassette, or “video tape”. Some bought new devices that could play both DVDs and VHSs of precious home movies. Others resisted the transition to DVDs until the end. A few of us even have VCRs stashed away in dark corners of our garages to this very day. Most, however, got rid of their VCRs via donation or dumpster. In recent years, homes and offices have seen a similar transition from Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) based monitors and TVs to more efficient LCDs. So what happened to all these once treasured gadgets? They contribute to the fastest growing waste stream flowing into landfills today: e-Waste. Electronic waste, or e-Waste, is comprised of electronic devices at the end of their “useful life”, such as televisions, computers, cell phones, monitors, printers, iPods... the list goes on. What makes e-Waste more problematic than traditional solid waste? Hi-tech products call for hi-tech, and often highly toxic, materials. For example, a typical CRT television can contain approximately five pounds of lead. Everyone knows about the dangers of lead. Frequently electronic devices also contain many less infamous, but equally dangerous materials. Beryllium, cadmium, and thallium, all well known carcinogens, are commonly found in electronic devices. The plastics in electronic items can also release toxic gases into the atmosphere as they age. Obviously, none of these toxins are welcome in our landfills, air, or ground water. Recycling is our best option here. In addition to preventing toxic material from entering our environment, reclamation prevents the ecological harm caused by mining for more of these materials. Recycling e-Waste items has become much easier recently, with many collection sites throughout Butte County. Sadly, getting your electronic items into these collection sites is only half the problem. Sometimes, the electronic waste collected by many well-intentioned (and some not so well intentioned) recyclers end up overseas in so called “e-Waste” villages, where electronic devices are sloppily dismantled to remove all valuable source materials. The remaining “junk” of the device is often burned in the open. Perhaps the most famous e-Waste village, Guiyu, in Guangdong Province, China was once a rice farming town. Now the soil and local water supplies are so severely polluted that no food can be grown there. Electronics have been flowing into Guiyu since 1995 where they are “recycled” by both commercial operations and a multitude of enterprising individuals smelting, smashing, and burning electronics with their bare hands, literally in their backyards. Nearly 9 out of 10 workers in Guiyu suffer from some sort of neurological, respiratory or digestive condition. The situation Guiyu is extreme, but not unique. E-Waste villages are now throughout India, in parts of Africa, and scattered elsewhere across the globe. One would like to think that these things only happen in the “third world”, but disturbingly, the US is using prison labor to process e-Waste. Eleven percent of our inmate population is working to process electronics in over 100 facilities nationwide, reportedly under unsafe working conditions. Not all e-Waste recycling programs exploit the environment and laborers. In fact as near as Sacramento, innovation is driving new methods and technologies that extract the usable materials from discarded electronics without releasing toxins into the environment. However, the research and development that drives next-generation recycling systems is costly and time consuming. Another way to extend the life of these devices and keep them out of landfill is to reuse them. What our fast-paced, progress-driven culture views as an obsolete computer can be an empowering tool for information processing and education to someone in a developing nation. A recent study in Peru showed the wide use of “obsolete” computers, largely from the US. The key is to their success: only import electronics that still work. Since no product can last forever, we must further develop green disposal and recycling techniques. Nevertheless, who will fund such a massive undertaking? Since manufactures who made these electronic items made them to be obsolete a year after purchase, and made them from toxic materials, doesn’t it make sense that they should pay for their safe disposal? The residents of New York State certainly think so. That’s why they recently passed an e-Waste bill that advocates Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR). EPR is the simple notion that is someone who profits from a product that uses toxic materials should be responsible for safely breaking down that product at the end of its life cycle. Why should it be the taxpayer’s responsibility to fund the disposal of items from which manufacturers usually profit a great deal? It’s like having to pay for an item twice: once when you buy it and later to dispose of it. Likely, the greatest benefit of EPR programs is the creation of incentive to design products that are more recyclable in the first place. If manufactures have to pay for the clean disposal of the goods they make, you can bet they will make them as cheap and easy to recycle as possible. So what can we ultimately do about this, right here and now?
From the Fall/Winter 2010 issue of the Environmental News. |