E-Waste Not, E-Want Not
E-Waste Across the Globe: Origins, Production, and Consumption
Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE), also abbreviated to EEE, electronic waste, or most commonly ‘e-waste’ is a problem with as many names as it has issues. E-waste is defined as all items of electrical or electronic equipment and its parts that have been discarded by its owner without the intent of reuse. There are six major categories of e-waste: temperature exchange equipment, screens, lamps, large equipment such as washing machines and dryers, small equipment such as microwaves and radio sets, and small IT. As the world continues to undergo rapid technological advancement, more and more electronic waste is being produced each year. E-waste is one of the globe’s fastest-growing waste streams because of the global growth in the tech industry, the consumer culture centered around disposability and convenience, and the interconnected international relationship between the wealthy countries offshoring their waste and the developing countries’ e-waste markets that emphasize a global class divide in economics and environmental concerns.
The world is becoming increasingly technological, as more products have embedded microchips, sensors, and semiconductors to make a ‘smart’ device out of watches, TVs, and even light switches. The consequence of this newfound intelligence is that these products are even more difficult to dispose of once they are now filled with electronic and electric parts. In 2016, there was 49 million tons of e-waste discarded across the globe, and the number is only expected to rise in 2021 to more than 57 million tons. Materials such as gold, silver, copper, platinum, palladium, lithium, and cobalt can line the insides of circuit boards and old computers, which still hold value after their intended use has passed. But if these electronics are not disposed of properly, the other elements within electronic waste, such as lead, mercury, cadmium and beryllium, polluting PVC plastic, and hazardous chemicals, such as brominated flame retardants, can be released into the environment. This can have negative consequences on the soil, water, and air quality, as well as affect human health if the waste excretes something toxic.
Additionally, in the twentieth century there has been an increase in consumer culture centered around disposability and convenience, highlighted in Susan Strasser’s piece “Toward a History of Trashmaking,” In the electronics industry, this means the lifespans of devices are getting shorter, since quality assurance and durability are disincentivized in favor of creating newer, more sensational models to replace older products instead of working to repair them. This cycle is another large contributor to e-waste, driven by consumer trends and greed. The advertising mission to convince consumers to always have the newest model and most up-to-date technology discourages people from using their items until they have gotten the full possible utility out of them, and thus fuels this inefficient waste production. In Bangalore, India, the information technology (IT) sector is one of the largest producers of e-waste because of the obsolescence rate of computers, which is around 30 percent every year. This constant overturn of products means the rate of e-waste gets higher with every technological advancement.
E-waste disposal operates in a similar fashion to many other global waste streams, in that wealthier countries often ship their e-waste to poorer countries with cheaper, more abundant labor to sort through the process of choosing to reuse or discard. Under the 1989 Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal, e-waste that contains hazardous elements may not be exported to ‘developing countries’ for their disposal, yet 250,000 metric tons is still illegally entering Africa each year.
The informal and formal sectors that receive this e-waste are able to make a profit out of sorting through the thrown away materials from the wealthier nations, to preserve their utility. So even though these electronics are discarded from one person without the intent of reuse, another person is able to find value that was not seen by the original disposer. In this way, waste is a cultural concept of what materials are valued and what is seen to no longer hold cultural importance in each landscape, just like the ideas around the concept of dirt Mary Douglas outlined in “Purity and Danger,”. Once the wealthier countries decide the object no longer holds its value, there is still a chance for it to have a second life as it moves around the global market for e-waste. Managing e-waste has become a problem for wealthier areas, such as the United States, Europe and Asia, with limited waste governance, as well as for developing areas that struggle with limited resources or technical expertise, such as countries in Africa and Asia that deal significantly with waste imports.
The market for second hand electronics and reused electronics that were previously considered e-waste has given developing countries a stream of technology imports to rely on, even if the outcome is less reliable. Once the item has gone through this resell process, it can then become e-waste again if it loses its utility in the developing country as well. For this reason, local users are now the main source of electronic waste in Africa, even though illegal imports of computers, televisions and electronics from Europe, Asia, and North America are still a prominent market. It is estimated that around 30 percent of all second hand imports to Africa don’t work, but most of the non-functioning items imported are still able to be repaired and sold locally. When time and care is spent on reusing what is available in a market, the tendency towards efficiency drastically increases. Even though there is still a utility to be found within the object, this form of waste stream reinforces global class hierarchies by allowing the wealthier, more westernized countries to purchase the nicer electronics as often as they please, while the other countries are forced to wait for their damaged old goods the wealthier country tossed away to avoid considering or mitigating their own waste stream.
The market for electronic waste and all it can produce in terms of resale value is a well tapped resource for a very lucrative reason. The raw materials inside of technology and electronics, while toxic is disposed of incorrectly, can be very profitable if salvaged well. Taiwan’s market is an example of mismanagement and its potential dangers. Taiwan has several EEE industries, such as Acer, Asus, and HTC Corporation, but in its early days of e-waste recycling, the producers began with mixed metal scrappers who did not treat e-waste carefully and caused severe air, water, and soil pollution. This led to the Environmental Protection Agency regulating the scrapers’ activities in 1984 and the creation of the Recycling Management Fund Committee in 1998. Bangladesh, on the other hand, has a more organized, formal system in place to deal with the e-waste efficiently. Almost every component and object is able to be disassembled, assembled, and resold to make a profit. Used printers, old monitors, hard drives, silicon chips, motherboards, and piles of circuitry are able to be peddled off in parts or whole. Both countries show the intricacies of the e-waste market and its possibilities to be effective or harmful to the environment.
Overall, e-waste is not a problem that will be slowing down or going away any time soon. Technology will continue to advance and develop each year and consumer behavior surrounding disposability and convenience seems unlikely to change and will continue to spur on production. The one aspect of e-waste management that can be more easily managed is the recycling systems in place to take advantage of what utility the products are still able to offer. Countries around the world are expanding, structuring, and regulating their e-waste industries, but it is still a gamble as to what will be ecologically beneficial. No matter what, e-waste continues to be a global problem that falls into the hands of the Global South, even though it is the wealthy western nations with dirt on their hands, and several new electronics receipts in their back pockets.
Works Cited
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Douglas, Mary. “Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo” (Routledge, 2002 [1966]), Introduction, and Chp. 2 (Secular Defilement”), p. 1-6, and 30-41.
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Rasnan, Mohammad Izzat, Ahmad Fariz Mohamed, Choo Ta Goh, and Kohei Watanabe. "Sustainable E-Waste Management in Asia: Analysis of Practices in Japan, Taiwan and Malaysia." Journal of Environmental Assessment Policy and Management 18, no. 4 (2016): 2. Accessed March 24, 2021. doi:10.2307/90000089.
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Strasser, Susan. Waste and Want: A Social History of Trash (Holt, 1999), “Toward a History of Trashmaking,” 3-20.
E-Waste Across the Globe: Disposal and Nature
Electronic waste is the contemporary disposal crisis. The consumer electronic industry has continued to expand with new technological innovation as the world faces an increasingly digital age. People have wondered what to do with older, less useful electronics once their full utility is called into question and beginning in the early 2000s, countries began to search for appropriate strategies for the disposal of electronic waste. The search highlighted the economic difference in how different countries viewed the problem of e-waste management. For European countries, e-waste became a regulatory concern that needed to be controlled and formally managed with government intervention. Countries like the United States and Japan followed suit and also began to experiment with formalized e-waste regulation. But many counties that were not in the political or economic position to deal with waste management effectively were forced to either deal with e-waste as both a threat and an opportunity. This recycling industry seen in both India and Africa was oftentimes dangerous and toxic because it lacked protective infrastructure. Due to the increasing regulation in western countries, E-waste recycling has been exported to the informal economy of the global south where the industry causes environmental and health concerns that could be more effectively dealt with by creating a more formal e-waste recycling sector in each country’s economy.
In modern history, there has always been a relationship between wealthier nations' waste production and the disposal practices in the poorer nations that are sometimes recycling the waste and sometimes just dealing with the environmental consequences of the world’s waste. One of the first formal steps taken to reduce the movement of hazardous waste to developing countries for disposal was the 1989 Basel Convention treaty, which sought to keep toxic materials within the country they were produced in to incentivize better waste management. Since the problem could no longer be offshored and ignored, wealthier countries began to search for appropriate strategies to dispose or recycle hazardous waste. The first major initiative was in Switzerland in 2003 and named the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) scheme, which placed the burden of e-waste recycling on the producers. This led to a more structured market where only firms with a government issued recycling license can be involved with e-waste disposal. This formal control over the system benefitted Switzerland’s model because it was easy for both consumers and producers to comply with the policy, it was well enforced with frequent audits of recycling facilities, and the license distribution gives the government the ability to prevent monopolies.
The EPR scheme was so successful in Switzerland that other countries implemented and replicated their model or were inspired to make their own. Japan, who is one of the largest producers of e-waste, created a legal system to promote effective utilization of resources and recycling waste in the same model as Switzerland. Now, Japan has the most effective e-waste management system in terms of citizen compliance and amount of waste recovered. In the United States, some states like California experimented with collecting a recycling fee from consumers that is then redistributed to entities licensed to handle e-waste, while other states followed the producers pay principle, which was found to both reduce disposal and increase environmentally sound recycling. After passing their Waste Disposal Act in 2006,
Taiwan employs a modified version of the EPR model in which producers are still responsible for the financial aspect of recycling, but the physical treatment of the waste is contracted out to private companies, and the whole process is monitored by the nation’s Recycling Management Fund. In 2011, Australian government launched the National Television and Computer Recycling Scheme (NTCRS) which made computer and television companies responsible for funding recycling programs for their products around the country.
As research on e-waste practices and strategies continued to be perfected in countries with enforcement and legislative capabilities, developing countries were unable to join in on effectively disposing or recycling their own hazardous waste, or the amount of waste they still illegally received from developing countries. The wealthier nations touted advanced recycling facilities and regulation, while a large percentage of waste still ended up in the developing countries’ informal recycling sector where it would be sorted for valuable, recyclable elements and then destroyed in an inefficient, toxin producing environment that the informal work conditions did not protect its workers from. This was highlighted in the documentary “The Toxic E-Waste Trade Killing Pakistan's Poorest” which showed the environmental and health risks present in the e-waste industry. Local residents even said that choosing to enter the informal e-waste recycling business immediately takes ten years off your life because of the exposure to toxic chemicals inherent to the job and the lack of structure in place to protect workers from the risk.
This pattern is reflected in other country’s e-waste practices, such as the circuit board recycling centers in Guiyu, China that use acid baths to extract valuable metal parts and burn away plastic parts, which releases cancer causing dioxins. Guiyu’s water is no longer safe to drink and the local community faces many health problems such miscarriages and lead poisoning.There are many negative pollution externalities from the exported e-waste industry in developing countries since the toxins released affect not just those involved in the recycling economy, but the entire community as well. Much like Rob Nixon’s concept of environmental dangers and injustices as a form of “slow violence,” these negative effects harm the poorest in the community that must turn to e-waste recycling, even with the risks, since they have no other options or ways to protect themselves. This is harder to mitigate since these country’s governments do not have the resources or infrastructure in place to deal with these issues or prevent them from getting worse.
Ghosh suggests the best strategy to rectify this imbalance would be to establish a formal recycling system in place of the informal markets that are currently dealing with most of the world’s waste. This would allow the government to be more involved in environmental regulation by registering and monitoring all firms that deal with e-waste, which has seen a good amount of success in the Western and Asian countries for both proper disposal tactics and recycling materials. This would also require public support for intervention and compliance with regulation, which would be difficult to garner in areas where the government does not have the people’s trust and environmental risks are not a widely held concern.
Imposing regulations without public support could diminish the rules’ success or even push citizens to protest the imposition, like was seen in the Majunga reluctance to follow sanitation rules from their French colonial powers and their dumping waste without following the regulated disposal techniques because of this reluctance. Cape Town, South Africa’s national government has made attempts to regulate landfill practices, but there have been issues with compliance and e-waste is still dumped indiscriminately. In 2001, India put in place the Battery Management and Handling Rules that mandated that manufacturers collect 90% of the batteries they sell, but because of limited enforcement or support the rule was widely disregarded and did not have the intended impact. Therefore, the Ghosh proposal to pressure developing countries to formalize their e-waste industry will face resistance, especially if it will affect profits or harm the communities that rely on this industry for job creation.
E-waste disposal has followed an interesting trajectory ever since it was identified as an extreme environmental risk in the 1990s and prioritized in global conversations about environmental protection. The legislative capabilities have followed two separate paths: the countries who have the civilian support to prioritize hazardous material disposal regulation with the infrastructure in place to enforce their decisions to make effective change and the countries without the same regulatory power, which has made them the target to receive other countries’ e-waste to deal with as well as their own, creating a large informal e-waste recycling sector in places like India and Pakistan. Majority of the world’s e-waste is being recycled in these informal sectors without protection in place for workers or from releasing the toxins that originally caused the environmental panic that started these conversations. This is polluting the world’s waterways, poisoning the air, and creating a health crisis that extends beyond the borders of just these countries. Therefore, to protect the world from the hazardous consequences of disposing of the rising amount of e-waste, all countries involved in e-waste recycling need to be supported in formalizing their recycling sector to better regulate and protect the environment.
Works Cited
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