April
2002
Exporting
Harm: The High-Tech Trashing of Asia
By the Basel Action Network and Silicon
Valley Toxics Coalition
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Just below the glamorous surface
of the benefits and wealth created by the information technology
revolution looms a darker reality.
Electronics
manufacturing is the world’s largest and most rapidly expanding
industry. As a consequence of this growth, combined with rapid product
obsolescence, electronic waste—or “E-waste”—is
creating the fastest growing waste stream in the industrialized
world. Not only
is this a crisis of quantity, it is one of toxicity in that the dismantling
and discarding of electronics releases hazardous materials into
the
environment—such as lead, beryllium, mercury, cadmium, and brominated
flame retardants—that pose serious occupational and environmental
health threats.
To date, however, industry, government and consumers have taken only
small steps to deal with this crisis. Rather than having to face the
problem directly, the U.S. and other rich economies have made use of
a convenient, and until now, hidden escape valve—exporting it to
the developing countries of Asia.
What is E-waste?
E-waste encompasses a broad and growing range of electronic devices,
from large household appliances such as refrigerators and air conditioners,
to cellular phones and consumer electronics, to computers and copy machines.
These contain different varieties of metals, volatile chemicals, plastics,
etc.
E-waste is generated at alarming rates. Whereas once consumers purchased
a stereo console or television set with the expectation that it would
last for a decade or more, the increasingly rapid evolution of technology
has effectively rendered everything disposable. Consumers now rarely
take broken electronics to a repair shop since buying a replacement
is often cheaper and more convenient. The average life span of a computer
has shrunk from four or five years to two years. Data from recycling
collections have revealed that more than 50 percent of turned-in computers
are in good working order, but are discarded to make way for the latest
technology. Such a throw-away ethic results in a massive increase in
corporate profits, particularly when the electronics industry does not
have to bear the financial burden of downstream costs.
Recycling E-Waste
The export of E-waste remains a dirty little secret of the high-tech
revolution. Scrutiny has been studiously avoided by the electronics
industry, government officials and many involved in E-waste recycling.
This often willful denial has been aided by the misleading labeling
of this trade with the ever-green word “recycling.”
Currently, and unfortunately, the vast majority of E-waste ends up in
our landfills or incinerators. While there are efforts to divert E-waste
from landfills via recycling, electronics “recycling” is a
misleading characterization of many disparate practices that are mostly
unregulated and often create additional hazards. “Recycling”
of hazardous wastes, even under the best of circumstances, has little
environmental benefit—it simply moves the hazards into secondary
products that eventually have to be disposed of. Current market conditions
and manufacturing methods discourage environmentally sound electronic
recycling practices, so most E-waste that is currently being “recycled”
is actually being exported, dismantled and/or discarded.
Generally, “recycled” E-waste in countries like China is dismantled
for metals and other items of worth by untrained, unprotected, and low-paid
workers who are not only exposed to the toxic ingredients of the electronics,
which can be inhaled and absorbed by the skin, but who also use hazardous
methods, such as acid baths, shredding and open burning, for extraction.
The processing pollutes the land, air and water. What can’t be
scavenged is dumped into local landfills, creating mountains of acid-treated
circuit boards and piles of cathode-ray tubes from computer monitors
and televisions, which leak toxins into the surrounding soil and water
while releasing gases into the air. Vast amounts of E-waste material
is burned or dumped in rice fields, irrigation canals and waterways.
Clearly, trade in E-waste causes real harm and exposes many of Asia’s
poorest people to poison. The health and economic costs of this trade
are vast and, due to export, are not borne by the western consumers
nor the waste brokers who benefit from the trade.
How Much E-waste is There?
In 1998, it was estimated that 20 million computers became obsolete
in the U.S., and the overall E-waste volume was estimated at five to
seven million tons.
The figures are projected to be higher today and rapidly growing. European
studies estimate that the volume of E-waste is increasing by three to
five percent per year, which is almost three times faster than the general
growth of the municipal waste stream. Today, E-waste likely comprises
more than five percent of all municipal solid waste; that’s more
than disposable diapers or beverage containers, and about the same amount
as all plastic packaging.
A 1999 study conducted by Stanford Resources, Inc. for the National
Safety Council projected that in 2001, more than 41 million personal
computers would become obsolete in the U.S. Analysts estimate that in
California alone more than 6,000 computers become obsolete every day.
Between the years 1997 and 2007, experts estimate that we will have
more than 500 million obsolete computers in the U.S. As this wave of
electronics surges into the waste stream, the environmental and economic
challenges will leave no community untouched.
The Path of Failure
The current U.S. system begins its path of failure before the electronics
ever enter the marketplace. First, manufacturers refuse to eliminate
hazardous materials or design their products for disassembly. Second,
government policies fail to hold manufacturers responsible for end-of-life
management of their products. Thus, consumers are the unwitting recipients
of a toxic product abandoned by those with the greatest ability to prevent
problems.
While there are many E-waste recyclers who espouse and practice sincere
environmental ethics and are trying to make the most of poor upstream
design, there are many others whose “recycling” claims are
false. Indeed, informed recycling industry sources estimate that between
50 to 80 percent of the E-waste collected for recycling in the western
U.S. is not recycled domestically, but is quickly placed on container
ships bound for destinations like China. Even the best-intentioned recyclers
have been forced, due to market realities, to participate in this failed
system. They see that the real solution is producer responsibility.
Few of us realize that the computer we pay someone to take, in the hope
that it will be recycled, might end up in China or some other far-off
Asian destination. Although it has been a secret well-kept from most
consumers, the export “solution” has been a common practice
for many years. But until now, nobody—not even many recyclers—seemed
to know what “recycling” really looks like. And it’s
clear that many did not want to know.
As anecdotal evidence began to mount, it became increasingly evident
that a field investigation was long overdue. The Basel Action Network
(BAN), a global watchdog network focused on toxic trade, began the investigation
with support from member organizations of another activist network,
“Waste Not Asia,” and the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition,
a coalition advocating for a clean and safe high-tech industry. The
findings documented in China, India and Pakistan should toll a loud
alarm and signal a call for sweeping changes in U.S. national policies
and practices.
The field investigation revealed extremely hazardous and dangerous E-waste
“recycling” operations that pollute the air, water and soil
of Asian countries.
E-waste exports to Asia are motivated entirely by brute global economics.
Market forces, if left unregulated, dictate that toxic waste will always
run “downhill” on an economic path of least resistance. If
left unchecked, the toxic effluent of the affluent will flood towards
the world’s poorest countries where labor is cheap, and occupational
and environmental protections are inadequate. A free trade in hazardous
wastes leaves the poorer peoples of the world with an untenable choice
between poverty and poison—a choice that nobody should have to
make.
The European Effort
In an effort to counter the unsustainable and unjust effects of free
trade in toxic wastes, an international treaty known as the Basel Convention
was created in 1989. Additionally, in 1994, the Basel Convention agreed
to adopt a total ban on the export of all hazardous wastes from rich
to poor countries for any reason, including for recycling.
The Basel Convention calls on all countries to reduce their exports
of hazardous wastes to a minimum and, to the extent possible, deal with
their waste problems within national borders. Indeed, this is an obligation
of the Basel Convention regardless of the level of waste management
technology in the importing country.
One would think that a country like the U.S. would be most able to fulfill
and implement this call for national self-sufficiency in waste management.
But, to date, the U.S. is the only developed country in the world that
has not ratified the Basel Convention. In fact, U.S. officials have
actively worked to defeat, and then to weaken, the Basel waste export
ban.
The U.S. government policies appear to be designed to promote sweeping
the E-waste problem out the Asian back door. Not only has the U.S. government
refused to ratify the Basel Convention and ban, it has intentionally
exempted E-wastes, within the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act,
from the minimal laws that do exist to protect importing countries (requiring
prior notification of hazardous waste shipments). When questioned, officials
at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) admit that export
is very much a part of the U.S. E-waste disposal strategy and that the
only issue of concern for the U.S. might be how to ensure minimal environmental
standards abroad.
But this type of thinking belies the reality of conditions in developing
countries and conveniently ignores the failures of the electronics industry
to design their products so that they can be safely recycled anywhere
in the world. As long as electronic products continue to contain a witch’s
brew of toxic chemicals and are designed without recycling in mind,
they pose a threat at their end-of-life. As electronic products are
currently constituted, E-waste recycling operations in any country will
generate polluting residues and emissions.
Environmental Injustice
It is sadly ironic that the U.S. was the first country in the world
to recognize and uphold the principle of environmental justice. This
principle asserts that no people, based on their race or economic status,
should be forced to bear a disproportionate burden of environmental
risks. While the U.S. has begun to institute some programs at home to
prevent environmental injustice, U.S. policy has actually promoted such
injustice on the global stage.
The pressures to export E-waste are increasing now that California and
Massachusetts have banned the landfilling of cathode-ray tube monitors
and will increase even more if and when the EPA finally issues new regulations
further regulating E-wastes domestically. Meanwhile, China has banned
the import of E-waste and yet the U.S. refuses to honor that ban by
preventing exports to them.
The current U.S. policy of encouraging the quick and dirty route of
export, hidden under the green cloak of the word “recycling,”
is not only an affront to environmental justice but also to the principles
of producer responsibility, clean production and pollution prevention.
Such export stifles the innovation needed to actually solve the problem
at its source—upstream at the point of design and manufacture.
As long as manufacturers can evade the ultimate costs of their hazardous
products, they can delay aggressively deploying their ingenuity to make
sure their products are less toxic and burdensome to the planet.
While the U.S. government and industry may be acting irresponsibly,
we as U.S. residents, small businesses and consumers can insist on another
path. A way forward has been heralded by the European Union. These 15
European countries have already implemented the Basel Convention and
have banned the export of all hazardous wastes to developing countries
for any reason.
They have also readied legislation which will ensure that manufacturers
are responsible for the entire life cycle of computers, are required
to take back computers and appliances, with the costs being borne by
the producers, and additionally, must agree to specific phase-out dates
for toxic inputs. Japan has also taken steps to solve the problem by
mandating more responsible design criteria and mandatory take-back programs.
Just as the U.S. is the largest impediment to the Basel treaty, the
U.S. is also increasingly falling behind in the global efforts to bring
about producer responsibility for life cycle impacts of products.
Now that we have seen the ugly face of the E-waste problem, we must
give the European model a second look. We can no longer pretend that
we don’t know what is happening with a large portion of our discarded
electronic waste. We can no longer allow its dumping on foreign shores.
The real answer surely lies not in exporting our problems to those least
able to deal with them, but in preventing the problems at their source.
This is an edited version of the Executive Summary of the report “Exporting
Harm: The High-Tech Trashing of Asia” by the Basel Action Network
and Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition. To learn more about the Silicon
Valley Toxics Coalition or to see the full report, visit www.svtc.org
or call (408) 287-6707. For information about the Basel Action Network
see www.ban.org. Reprinted
with kind permission.
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