The E-Waste Problem and Our Work For Solutions
- The Problem With Electronics:
- Quickly Obsolete
- Hard to Recycle
- Discards Badly Managed
- Our Work For Solutions:
- Producer Takeback
- Green Design
- Responsible Recycling
- Legislation and Policy
Watch the CBS 60 Minutes Segment on E-Waste Export
60 Minutes Follows America’s Toxic Electronic Waste As It Is Illegally Shipped To Become China’s Dirty Secret in “Electronic Wasteland.”
Fake Recycling
Recyclers dupe the public, telling they they are recycling our old products, when they are actually exporting them to China and other developing nations. Read more about fake recycling.
Resources on the E-Waste Export Problem
"Exporting Harm: The High-Tech Trashing of Asia", by the Basel Action Network and Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition.
Report on e-waste dumping in Africa "Digital Dump - Exporting Reuse and Abuse to Africa," by the Basel Action Network, 2005.
Link to trailer of the film "Digital Dump."
Narrated slide show on e-waste dumping in Guiyu, China by Chien-Min Chung.
Report and film on e-waste dumping in Ghana and Nigeria, Hidden Flow by Consumers International, April 2008.
Read Greenpeace report and view film onlin about e-waste dumping in Ghana.
Report: "Recycling of Electronic Wastes in China and India: Workplace and Environmental Contamination," Greenpeace International, August 2005. Link to report
The Problem of Global Electronic Waste Dumping
Many electronics recyclers don't actually recycle the electronics they collect. They can make more money by selling old electronic products to exporting waste traders than by processing it here in the US. Traders send it to developing countries where workers earn extremely low wages (often a few dollars per day) and where health and safety and environmental laws, enforcement, infrastructure and citizens’ rights are very weak.
Simply stated, we are solving our e-waste problem by exporting it to poor countries around the globe.
Primitive Processing Contaminates Workers, Residents
In these countries, the e-waste ends up in backyard recycling operations, often literally behind peoples' homes. One example is Guiyu, China, an area where a lot of our e-waste goes. They use crude and unsafe methods of taking apart our old computers and TVs to get to and remove the metals, which they can sell, causing great harm in the process. These dangerous practices include:
- Bashing open cathode ray tubes with hammers, exposing the toxic phosphor dust inside.
- Cooking circuit boards in woks over open fires to melt the lead solder, breathing in toxic lead fumes.
- Burning wires in open piles to melt away the plastics (to get at the copper inside).
- Burning the plastic casings, creating dioxins and furans - some of the most poisonous fumes you can breathe.
- Throwing the unwanted (but very hazardous) leaded glass into former irrigation ditches
- Dumping pure acids and dissolved heavy metals directly into their rivers.
These horrific working conditions plus weak labor standards in China and many of the other developing countries where e-waste is sent, mean that women and children are often directly exposed to lead and other hazardous materials.
Exporting Harm: The High Tech Trashing of Asia
In 2001, the Basel Action Network (BAN) lead several groups in an investigation of e-waste processing in China, India, and Pakistan. The investigation uncovered an entire area known as Guiyu in Guangdong Province, surrounding the Lianjiang River just 4 hours drive northeast of Hong Kong where about 100,000 poor migrant workers are employed breaking apart and processing obsolete computers imported primarily from North America. The workers were found to be using 19th century technologies to clean up the wastes from the 21st century.
Digital Dump: Exporting Reuse and Abuse to Africa
In 2005, BAN produced a film and report on e-waste export to Africa, for the reuse market, called "Digital Dump: Exporting Reuse and Abuse to Africa." This shocking film shows how a large quantity of the computers exported to Lagos, Nigeria supposedly for reuse are reallymostly non-working, non-repairable trash. With no real electronics recycling infrastructure, Lagos ends up burning these toxics-laden products in open pits, very close to residential areas.
How much e-waste do we export each year?
We export enough e-waste each year to fill 5126 shipping containers (40 ft x 8.5 ft). If you stacked them up, they'd reach 8 miles high - higher than Mt Everest, or commercial flights.
Photos on this page © Basel Action Network, 2009
Federal GAO Report Finds E-Waste Exports Handled Unsafely
In August 2008, the federal Government Accountability Office (GAO) published a scathing report on e-waste exports from the us, finding that “a substantial amount ends up in countries such as China and India, where they are often handled and disposed of unsafely. These countries often lack the capacity to safely handle and dispose of used electronics if the units are not in reusable condition when received, and the countries’ extremely low labor costs and the reported lack of effective environmental controls make unsafe recycling commonplace.”
Link to GAO report: EPA Needs to Better Control Harmful U.S. Exports through Stronger Enforcement and More Comprehensive Regulation
