Prout Research Institute

Dumping Electronic Wastes in Developing Countries
By Seeraj Mohamed, CPE Staff Economist

Are you still using a Pentium III? Can you access the web with your cell phone? Are you being left behind in the brave, new, wired world? The pressure to upgrade is intense but before you rush out and buy the latest electronic gadget there is a more serious question you need to ask. Do you know what happens to the obsolete electronic products you send for recycling or to the dump?

A report called Exporting Harm: The High-Tech Trashing of Asia, by a coalition of environmental organizations warns that enormous amounts of hazardous electronic wastes (E-wastes) are being exported to China, India and Pakistan. They say that methods used to process E-wastes in these countries are extremely harmful to people and the environment.

Members of the coalition found pollutant levels in villages in China where E-wastes are – processed, in Guangdong Province, just four hours drive from Hong Kong – to be hundreds of thousands of times higher than those allowed in developed countries. The report argues that the export of E-wastes to developing countries without adequate environmental regulations is not recycling but dumping. It is a way for the electronics industry of industrialized countries to pass on downstream costs to those living in developing countries.

Increasing rates of technological change has rendered electronic products virtually disposable due to rapid product obsolescence. For example, the lifespan of a computer has shrunk from four to five years to about two years. It is estimated that up to 50% of computers turned in for recycling in the U.S. are in good, working order. The electronics industry vigorously promotes this fad of increased consumption. It is the largest and fastest growing manufacturing industry in the world.

The environmental consequences of the rapid growth of the electronics industry and the consumer culture of increasing rates of mass consumption of electronic products are disastrous. E-waste is the fastest growing stream of waste in industrialized countries. However, neither the industry nor the consumers of electronics products bear the downstream costs of the enormous quantities of wastes produced.

E-wastes contain over one thousand different substances, many of which are highly toxic (e.g., lead, cadmium, beryllium, mercury, etc.). The burden of E-waste is borne by people who live in developing countries. Fifty to eighty percent of the E-waste collected for recycling in the U.S. is exported to developing countries, most of it to Asia. The amount of E-waste exported will probably increase as other states join Massachusetts and California in banning the landfilling of CRT monitors. It is likely that Environmental Protection Agency will further regulate the disposal of E-waste in the U.S., driving its export up even more.

The U.S. has not taken responsibility for their E-wastes because they have been able to dump it in poor countries. The electronics companies refuse to use less hazardous materials or to design for disassembly. The U.S. government refuses to hold electronics companies accountable for end-of-life management of their products. Furthermore, the U.S. is the only developed country that has not ratified the Basel Convention that bans the export of toxic wastes, instead it is actively working to bring to an end or weaken the convention.

It is time for us – as consumers and concerned citizens – to take action and show solidarity with people in environments being harmed by our consumption of electronic products. We should insist that the U.S. government set high environmental standards for design and materials used in electronic products. We should demand that dumping of E-wastes be stopped and that E-wastes are processed where they are consumed. Electronics companies must be told to take responsibility for end-of-life management of electronic products they produce.

Sources and Further Reading:
The coalition of environmental organizations that prepared the report, Exporting Harm: The High-Tech Trashing of Asia are the Basel Action Network (BAN), the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition (SVTC), Toxic Links India (TLI), SCOPE (Pakistan) and Greenpeace China.
Exporting Harm: The High-Tech Trashing of Asia is available on the BAN website: www.ban.org
Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition: www.svtc.org
Greenpeace China: www.greenpeace-china.org.hk
Toxics Link India: www.toxicslink.org
The Society for Conservation and Protection of the Environment (Pakistan) can be contacted at E-mail: scope@khi.compol.com

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