HIGH-TECH DRECK: Some of the used cellphones, computers and televisions thrown out in the U.S. are shipped to developing countries where they are melted to extract valuable—but toxic—materials inside.
Image: © Basel Action Network 2006
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The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) knows that most of the 1.9 million tons (1.7 million metric tons) of discarded cell phones, computers and televisions, among other electronic goods, went into landfills, because those are the agency's own figures.
The EPA also knows that this so-called e-waste contains cadmium, mercury and other toxic substances, and it is responsible for making sure that lead-laden monitors and television sets with cathode-ray tubes (CRT) are disposed of properly and the parts recycled. But congressional investigators charge that the EPA has failed to even attempt to clean up the mess—or keep it in check. The agency has "no plans and no timetable for developing the basic components of an enforcement strategy," concludes a report released this week by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), Congress's investigative arm.
GAO official John Stephenson testified at a House hearing yesterday that his investigators had posed as would-be buyers of CRT waste in Hong Kong, India, Pakistan, Singapore and Vietnam and found at least 43 recyclers willing to export the toxic e-waste from the U.S. in direct violation of EPA regulations. In addition, unlike the European Union (E.U.), the EPA has no regulations concerning the disposal of other types of used electronic devices, despite their dangers.
"This is a failure to enforce even the weak regulations they have," says Democratic Rep. Gene Green of Houston, who introduced a House resolution calling for a ban on the export of e-waste. (Sen. Sherrod Brown (D–Ohio) introduced a similar measure in the Senate.) "EPA is sometimes not as interested in doing what statutorily they should be."
According to the report, the EPA told GAO officials that it prefers "nonregulatory, voluntary approaches" to the growing e-waste problem. "EPA currently has 10 ongoing investigations and the [regional offices] plan to conduct inspections at electronic waste collection and recycling facilities this year," wrote assistant administrators Granta Nakayama and Susan Parker Bodine in response.
When such e-waste is exported to places such as Guiyu in China, it ends up in vast recycling centers where laborers earn a pittance smashing, cracking, melting and cooking old electronic goods to extract the valuable materials they hold, ranging from gold to plastics. But burning off wire insulation, cooking circuit boards and using acid to extract gold all take a health and environmental toll. A study published last year in Environmental Health Perspectives found that children in Guiyu had lead levels 50 percent higher than those in surrounding villages and 50 percent higher than safety limits set by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Lead is known to cause brain damage.
That toll is not confined to China. According to a recent study by chemist Jeffrey Weidenhamer of Ashland University in Ohio, the lead in recalled children's jewelry bears a proportion of tin and copper that are "consistent with an origin from recovered solder." And U.S. prisoners are often exposed to the same conditions working at disassembling e-waste for the government-owned corporation UNICOR Federal Prison Industries in Washington, D.C. "I visited a federal prison in California and I saw prisoners with hammers smashing apart CRT monitors," says Ted Smith, chairman of the advocacy group Electronics TakeBack Coalition. "There are prisoners who have been made ill and a number of prison guards as well."
As a result, at least nine states, including California, Maine and Maryland, have implemented their own controls on the proper handling of e-waste, and the electronics industry has voluntary guidelines to reduce it. "We have a national system to collect and recycle all products we put our name on," says Mark Small, vice president for corporate environment, safety and health at Sony Corporation of America, which has partnered with Waste Management, Inc., to recycle e-waste. "We have eliminated probably 99 percent–plus of the toxic materials in our products. We use lead-free solder and changed the design of TVs from CRT to new [liquid-crystal displays]."
Other companies, such as Apple, Dell and Hewlett-Packard have similar programs, and Samsung is set to launch a free take-back program for all their electronic products, including old televisions, on October 1.
The E.U. in 2002 imposed a comprehensive ban on the export of any e-waste, along with a requirement for producers of such electronic goods to take back used electronics. Violators face fines up to 1.2 million euros or imprisonment. In contrast, the EPA to date has imposed only one fine of $32,500 on a single exporter, according to the GAO report.
But given the difficulty and expense of dealing with e-waste properly, unscrupulous E.U. recyclers have taken to labeling their shipments as used electronics that can be employed in developing countries to bridge the digital divide. "The containers arriving in ports like Lagos [Nigeria] were loaded with 75 percent junk and 25 percent material that could be resold in the marketplace," Smith says. "They take that material that was not salable, dump it and burn it."
He adds: "There are an awful lot of bottom-feeders in this industry."
But some companies, such as Columbus, Ohio–based Redemtech, have found that coping with the more than three billion electronic devices purchased each year by U.S. companies and consumers can be good business. "Per weight of e-waste, 90 percent of it is moderately valuable nontoxics like steel, aluminum, plastics," says Redemtech president, Robert Houghton, which the company handles at one of six plants in North America. The rest is sent to centralized facilities with the safety equipment to handle toxic materials such as lead. "If we send 1,000 pounds of toxic-bearing circuit cards, we expect to have 1,000 pounds of materials liberated."
The volume of e-waste, particularly lead-bearing CRTs, will likely grow exponentially next February, when U.S. television networks switch from analog to digital signals. And it would appear, based on the GAO report, that EPA is not ready to enforce regulations for the proper handling of such toxic materials.
Further, the liquid-crystal display televisions that are likely to replace them contain mercury in the fluorescent lightbulbs inside them. "We don't know how to take out the mercury, let alone deal with it responsibly," Smith says.
In the future, light-emitting diodes might prove a toxic-free alternative, according to Sony's Small. But that would just unleash another onslaught of e-waste if all TV owners were to make the switch again—and much of that would likely end up shipped out of the country. "Only 5 percent of imports are inspected," Small notes. "One can only imagine how many exports are inspected."
"We can't just ship it overseas any longer and pretend it doesn't exist," says Rep. Mike Thompson (D–Calif.) who supports federal e-waste legislation. "It should be regulated to prevent harm to human health and the environment overseas—and right here in this country."
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9 Comments
Add CommentHell no we don't care. The world is our dumping ground. Environment? What's that? Those third world plebs never had a chance anyway. They should be happy we let them work in the sweatshops producing our luxury items. Vote Republican!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThough dumping tech trash has been an open secret for years, it is a rare revelation from a scientific journal, meaning that the toxic waste is posing a real serious environmental and health problem.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe US often plays a double standard game. There has been an abundance of regulations, but few could be said to have been adequately enforced. For the US, as long as the venomous high-tech garbage can be pushed overseas, how the other countries dispose them would not be its concern.
In some parts of China and Asia, the cheap laborers have been risking their lives for a pittance, and the lead-polluted environment is already harming the childrens health, causing early brain damage.
The hardware manufacturers need to be transparent. They could work together with the authority and make a conscientious effort to tackle this pernicious yet utterly ugly issue immediately.
(Tan Boon Tee)
US government is not only polluting environment, it has chronically polluted mind of its citizens. Look at WMD and Iraq war, was not pollution in mind too much. Now McCain is polluting the mind to filth.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am always amazed at the people who believe that it is the responsibility of the United States to protect the people of other countries from themselves. It is possible to recycle ANY waste safely. The question is: Is it worth the cost? It is not responsible for workers to be exposed to hazardous materials when modest efforts will protect them. The responsibility, however, lies with the owners and workers themselves, not with us.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe idea that all cultures are equally valid and we should "respect" them in all of their aspects is one of the most evil of our time. WE are asked to respect societies that believe in honor killings, in keeping women ignorant, that it is better to kill baby girls so you can have a boy, that you should have as many children as you can not as many as you can support. THEY are allowed to believe that they should kill any who do not believe as they do, that their religous leaders have a pipeline to the mind of god, and that group owns the individual.
The peoples of Africa, Asia, and South America are not impoverished for lack of natural resources but because they do not have the cultural will to organize themselves into societies that respect all of their members and work to provide opportunities for all of their members to thrive.
Poverty is not a condition it is a state of mind.
Very well said, Blueheron
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"WE are asked to respect societies that believe in honor killings, in keeping women ignorant, that it is better to kill baby girls so you can have a boy, that you should have as many children as you can not as many as you can support." THEY are allowed to believe that they should kill any who do not believe as they do, that their religous leaders have a pipeline to the mind of god, and that group owns the individual.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou do realize that every attribute you just wrote is enthusiastically promoted within our own country as well. Honor killings; as long as they're just iraqis, it's all in the name of progress. Keeping women ignorant; ever been to a church? As many children as you can support; again, ever listened at church, or been to a city for that matter ? Breed like crazy, the world will provide for them. That you should kill any who do not believe as you do; you're talking about a minority of fundamentalist religious nuts. We have our own here as well, and their demographic constitutes the most powerful voter base in the country. Their religious leaders have a mental pipeline to God; look no further than your current president and the GOP's next VP in line. Total nutcases. The group owns the individual; music to the ears of every authoritarian in the world.
The countries of Africa, Asia, and South America are full of people doing every possible thing they can so that they may life another day. We have the luxury of being choosy, because the US still has 95% of the worlds money (and still can't make the country work.)
Very well said, hotblack.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisVery negative folks. However in Calf where I'm from the have a sur-charge for e-waste when you buy a television which helps defrays the cost of disposal. When your old TV set is at the end of life you take it to the disposal center and they disassemble it there and take the usable parts and either recycle or dispose of it correctly. They make a profit. Remember profit can be made in cleaning up as well as trashing our planet.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSadly many Californians are not aware of the program and just dump their sets in either garbage or else where. Causing harm to the environment.
As far as all that other stuff goes inequality has been around since the beginning of civilization. It is true that America has a great deal of wealth in money, talent and resources. Because of the inequality of distribution of natural resources like oil we are exporting more wealth than any time in history to pay our oil bill. We depend on dodgy governments to supply us with our need for oil. These societies have yet to come to the terms of modem ideas of western civilization. They are grounded in tribal relationships and feudal societies which are very incompatible with our values. There is also the vast gulf in classes there between poor and rich. This is a ideal breading ground for extremism. Because of the global economy they have a built in infrastructure to use it against the US and European and Asian counties or any other place they can think of to expose their ideas and to right the wrongs of the world. These religious zealots desire to spread their perverted forms of their religious ideas which are against the very books they see as sacred and holy.
The Western countries respond not with understanding but with a desire to stamp out those zealots. We are just as misguided as those people and we do great harm as well in our reactions to them.
However the idea of tolerance and understanding and respect for each other's views is going extinct in both camps. Instead with have a struggle going on between extremism in the greed of west and the huge gulf of want in the east.. It is between the happy prosperous America that is doing well and is well provided for and the oppressed masses of the world that feed cloth give oil to us but we don’t see it hear it or even bother to understand it. I.E the rich get richer and the poor are just pawns or disposable people. Used and then thrown away like a Styrofoam cup when used up.
In America today :
On the other side of this line is people either through no fault of their own have fallen into have not class. Some of it is cause by high prices for medical technologies or bad mortgages or bad choices. When you fall through to the other side tax rebates or promises of a better tomorrow have little meaning. Saying the fundamentals of our country are strong does littlie to help people who have lost their jobs in manufacturing or states the depend on single business like auto manufacturing. They just get screwed even worse with some fat cat racking in the dough and when they go to far guess what we can count on the government to bail them out. Short term gains we are just not a farsighted people which is sad.
The consumer is to blame meaning in the US we have the power to buy our own goods and services but we don’t. We are greedy desiring to cut costs and get a better deal. By cutting costs we cut corners and cause most of the problems we are seeing today. Geed unmitigated greed which is to hell with the individual I want my product and I want it at the lowest cost to hell with buying to help our people out.
We should make our world society better because we can use the global economy to get what we want at the best price possible using people who are not much above slave labor.
This creates the need for cheep labor and the desires for the global economy. This also causes extremism because most of those populations are oppressed poverty stricken and are willing to take anything to get money for that short term gain.
Short term gain long term pain. Labor problems environmental woes and governments who are cozily in bed with each other and look the other way as far as enforcing any laws to protect its citizens.
Remember money is the root of all evil. We are greedy short sided people in the US and we are reaping this crop of greed.... But if we wake up and realize what is going on maybe things can change... just maybe
If we can get everyone to realise that trash is essentially raw material wasted through poor technology, we will be on the road to the elimination of industrial and domestic wastes. If we bar-coded all goods and subcomponents we could efficiently sort and reuse them without having to use inefficient or dangerous labour-intensive methods. Ecologists tend to use polite rational scientific descriptions of environmental problems. Perhaps we should use the power of advertising agencies to declare a 'War on waste' via all the media?
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