It is electronic waste, and disposing of it in an environmentally friendly way is proving complicated and open to abuse.
With the astronomical growth of e-waste in the last decade, the number of recyclers of the ever-growing tidal wave of discarded computers, monitors, printers and cell phones has exploded in North America.
And while some are doing their best to recycle responsibly, many are illegally shipping e-waste to developing countries in Asia and Africa where its toxic materials are taking a high toll on communities, farmland and waterways.
“They all claim to be green and hide behind the name ’recycling',” says Jim Puckett, founder of the Seattle-based Basel Action Network (BAN), a watchdog group that is named for the Basel Convention, a 1994 treaty designed to stop rich countries from dumping their e-waste on developing ones.
“But when you’re diverting this waste from local landfills and recycling it in horrific and primitive conditions in China, Africa or India, you’re not doing the world any favours. Many of these recyclers will export a major fraction of the toxic waste stream.”
The conditions Puckett describes are most evident in Guiyu in southern China, where the streets are lined with pile after pile of electronic junk. It is in Guiyu that, according to a recent exposé by CBS' 60 Minutes, “21st century toxins are being managed in a 17th century environment.”
In crude operations, unprotected workers use fire and mercuric acid baths to extract the precious metals from the e-waste. The fire produces clouds of acrid smoke which, according to the documentary, releases polychlorinated and polybrominated dioxins — some of the most toxic compounds on earth.
Although China banned the import of e-waste in 1996, an estimated one million tons of it are treated in Guiyu yearly by 5500 family-based operations, supporting 100,000 migrant workers. Scientific studies have found that 80 per cent of Guiyu’s children have dangerously high levels of lead in their blood, and pregnancies are six times more likely to end in miscarriage.
A recent CBC documentary showed ocean-going containers of e-waste leaving Vancouver bound for Hong Kong. According to BAN’s research, since 2001 unscrupulous Canadian recyclers have been exporting hazardous electronic scrap to developing countries even though the practice is illegal in Canada.
Although Canada is a signatory to the Basel Convention, Puckett says enforcement is lax, and loopholes in existing laws mean they are not very effective.
In the only known enforcement effort to date (Environment Canada doesn’t talk publicly about its
investigations), 50 containers loaded with about 500,000 kg of e-waste destined for China and Hong Kong were seized at the Port of Vancouver in 2006. The 27 companies involved were fined $2,000 apiece under the Customs Act, but the company names were not revealed.
Requests for an interview with Environment Canada for this story were acknowledged, but comments were not received by deadline.
The U.S., says Puckett, is “even worse than Canada” in that it only has a “really weak” law on the export of cathode ray tubes, which contain lead.
In September, the U.S. Government Accountability Office released a report denouncing the lack of government controls and enforcement over e-waste exports. BAN and the Electronic TakeBack Coalition are pursuing federal legislation to ban national exports.
With Guiyu’s e-waste industry estimated to be worth $140 million, it comes as no surprise that organized crime would have a finger in the pie. RCMP Commissioner William Elliott told the Vancouver Board of Trade last Wednesday that some crime groups in Canada are involved in the illegal disposal of e-waste.
“It’s actually cost-effective to ship this stuff half-way round the world,” says Ifny Lachance, coordinator and co-founder of Free Geek Vancouver, a non-profit e-waste reuse and recycling centre.
“If you have to deal with it here in North America, with more stringent regulations it’s a bit more of a pricey undertaking. However, that is what we should be focusing on — we should be creating Canadian jobs by recycling it here because ultimately under the Basel Convention our waste is our responsibility.”
Alberta was the first Canadian province to enact legislation in 2004, opening 75 centres to deal with e-waste. Electronics Produce Stewardship Canada, which was created by the electronics industry to bring together government and private stakeholders to initiate an e-waste program, introduced a national recycling program in 2006.
However, Free Geek Vancouver and Redemtech are the only two electronics recyclers in Canada that have been approved as e-Stewards, a program initiated by BAN that has rigorous standards and is soon to be fully accredited and certified. E-Stewards make sure the “downstream waste” that leaves their facilities is recycled responsibly and not exported.
“It’s really hard to get,” says Lachance. “We wanted to get it because the bad guys couldn’t get it and they couldn’t lie their way into getting it and they couldn’t buy it. It’s a very pure standard.”
The first operation of its kind in Canada, Free Geek Vancouver focuses on re-use and “employs” more than 750 volunteers. In return for 24 hours of their time, volunteers receive a refurbished desktop computer and Free Geek also provides equipment to non-profits through their Hardware Grant Foundation.
The idea is to have as many computers as possible “flow back into the community,” says Lachance. Two-thirds of Free Geek’s revenue comes from its computer thrift store and a third from selling scrap.
Ten years ago, the average life span of a computer was six years. Today it’s two. According to the 60 Minutes documentary, about 130,000 computers are thrown out every day in the U.S. Over 100 million cell phones are discarded annually. A U.S. government-mandated switch to digital broadcasting in February 2009 is expected to result in a flood of discarded TVs into the waste stream.
Lachance says that apart from “people who have to be on the cutting edge,” nobody should be buying new computers. Manufacturers have to be pressured to stop using toxic materials and recyclers need to put more effort into promoting the re-use of discarded computers.
“If we’re going to talk about ethical recycling, anyone who’s not focused on re-use as a first priority is not doing ethical recycling,” she says. “A Pentium 4 getting destroyed in a smelter breaks my heart when someone down the street could be using it.”
