Electronic waste

Don't let's waste waste

“TO ADDRESS the problems caused by electronic waste, American businesses, government, and individuals must work together to manage these electronics throughout the product lifecycle—from design and manufacturing through their use and eventual recycling, recovery, and disposal.”

Few would question the bona fide green intent of the above statement. After all, while Babbage wrote last month that unwanted electronics have become Europe’s fastest-growing waste problem, across the Atlantic the challenge is even starker. In America, scattershot state-level policies have failed to converge on any coherent action, and precious little information exists on exactly where the country’s discarded gadgets are going.

Still, the expressed sentiment would probably carry little weight were these not the words of President Barack Obama, announcing last  November the creation of a new inter-agency e-waste task force. Mr Obama has a track record in policies for the safe disposal of hazardous materials, having sponsored a successful cross-party bill to ban American mercury exports as a Senator in 2008.

Acknowledging the scale of the e-waste challenge, the United States has turned to Solving the E-Waste Problem (StEP), an initiative run by the United Nations University (UNU), which provides a forum for scientific solutions to international policy problems. Last month the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), a founding member of the initiative, announced a new $2.5m grant to help finance the creation of the first-ever comprehensive inventory of the country’s e-waste output. Under leadership of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the National Center for Electronics Recycling, the project will directly co-operate with electronics manufacturers who, though generally happy to tally units sold, are often less rigorous in reporting those returned for recycling.

Meanwhile experts will receive more money for their efforts to track international shipments of e-waste. Though the familiar media trope is of obsolete hi-tech junk shipped off for dangerous backyard recycling, in reality many of these products are refurbished on arrival and receive a second lease of life in developing-world households. This is in principle beneficial, as otherwise unaffordable TVs and computers can help close the digital divide in the harbour cities of West Africa and South Asia. The problem is distinguishing between the two trades.

Speaking at the UNU initiative’s base in Bonn, StEP's co-founder Ruediger Kuehr said:

“There is a hunger, not just for the materials, but for re-use. But there are definitely also unscrupulous brokers about who are only interested in shipping this equipment to get, for very little money, as much as possible out of this equipment by primitively recycling precious metals.”

Establishing the true nature of old electronics shipments, as well as the quantities involved, is an enormous logistical task. It requires the co-operation of authorities in the destination cities, which is sometimes hard to come by. And StEP is also charged with assessing the facilities available at destination for safe disposal of such equipment once it reaches end of life. “Without this infrastructure in place, we have to question our approach, even for good reasons, in shipping this kind of equipment,” says Mr Kuehr.

But it is not clear these are the “problems” to which Mr Obama refers. No American wants an electronic dumping ground in their backyard, but how to explain the EPA’s interest in far-flung shipments? While it is commendable to want to protect labourers in poor countries from toxic chemicals and nefarious brokers, these untold shipments raise the economic problem of resource depletion.

When e-waste is exported to the developing world it is estimated that only 25% of gold contained in mobile phones, for instance, is reclaimed, compared with all of it using the most advanced recycling technologies available in the rich world. Last week’s crashnotwithstanding, the steady rise in commodity prices means manufacturers have a vested interest in keeping supplies high, or even holding onto essential precious metals. Several of StEP’s manufacturer partners are known to be assessing the viability of equipment-lease and deposit schemes, in an attempt to encourage consumers to return electronics directly to them at the end of their lifecycles.

And with booms in a host of battery-powered devices on the horizon—not least electric cars, which are anticipated to place an enormous strain on resources and, ultimately, recycling facilities—both the competition for commodities and the need for better infrastructure is expected only to grow in the coming years.

Though collecting and recycling does not currently make economic sense for many materials, it is a shrewd long-term move to begin taking stock
.