Electronic product innovations satisfy many needs, including the desire of people to stay connected around the globe. As new products are continually introduced into the marketplace, consumers replace existing electronic products that are damaged or simply outdated. The resulting mass of electronic products discarded is becoming the fastest growing waste stream in the world leading to polluted environments. (1)
Electronic waste (e-waste) which includes all types of electrical or electronic equipment is produced in staggering quantities, estimated globally to be 41.8 million tons in 2014. E-waste recycling is a source of much needed income in many low to middle income countries. However, its handling and disposal in underdeveloped countries is often unsafe and leads to contaminated environments. Rudimentary and uncontrolled processing methods often result in substantial harmful chemical exposures among vulnerable populations, including women and children. E-waste hazards have not yet received the attention they deserve in research and public health agendas. (2)
The EPA reports that the US average household in 2013 owned 28 consumer electronics and in that same year the nation generated 3.14 million tons of electronic waste. The United Nations reports that only 16 percent of the world's e-waste in 2014 was recycled by government agencies or companies sanctioned by regulators. (3)
Massive amounts of e-waste are produced and redistributed. According to 2014 estimates, the top producer was the United States, which generated 7.1 million tons followed by China, which generated nearly 6 million tons. (2)
Cell Phones
A mobile phone can contain greater than 40 elements, including base metals such as copper, special metals such as cobalt, and precious metals such as gold, that are desirable for recycling. Precious metals such as platinum, indium, and ruthenium that are used extensively in modern electronics are naturally available in limited amounts.
For every million cell phones we recycle, 35,000 pounds of copper, 772 pounds of silver, 75 pounds of gold, and 33 pounds of palladium can be recovered. (4)
Using this as a base, one comes up with the following values for metals in the 5.6 billion cell phones of 2012:
Copper
$192 million
Silver
$344 million
Gold
$2,300 million
Palladium
$702 million
>Platinum
$43 million
Total
$3.581 million ( $3.58 billion)
According to EPA, only around 10 percent of cell phones are recycled. Developing Countries and E-Waste
Of the waste stream that is sent to developing countries, 80 percent ends up being shipped (often illegally) to be recycled by hundreds of thousands of informal workers. Such globalization of e-waste has adverse environmental and health implications.
Although the e-waste stream is a small portion of global municipal waste, accounting for about 5%, it plays a significant employment role in the recycling sectors of some low and middle income countries such as China, India, Pakistan, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, Vietnam, Ghana, and Nigeria. For example, in Guiyu, China, possibly the largest e-waste recycling location in the world, about 100,000 people are employed as e-waste recyclers. (2)
E-waste is shipped to countries that often lack adequate infrastructure to effectively manage it in an environmentally sound manner. The Agbogbloshie area of Ghana, where about 40,000 people live, provides an example of how e-waste contamination can pervade the daily lives of nearly all residents. Into this area—one of the largest informal e-waste dumping and processing sites in Africa—about 215,000 tons of secondhand consumer electronics, primarily from Western Europe, are imported annually. Because this region has considerable overlap among industrial, commercial and residential zones, Pure Earth (formerly Blacksmith Institute) has ranked Agbogbloshsie as one of the world's 10 worst toxic threats. (5)
However, there is another side to this story and Alang is a good example. At Alang in the Gulf of Cambay on India's Arabian Coast, thousands of rusting old ships are dismantled by 40,000 men, all working there by choice to convert half the world's disused ships into scraps of steel to be used in Indian manufacturing. The shipyards at Alang recycle approximately half of all ships salvaged around the world. It is considered the world's largest graveyard of ships. (6)
No debate this is dangerous for the workers and potentially environmentally harmful. However, the workers earn many times the income they would have received from working in the fields and willingly make this trade-off. William Langwiesche reports, “By local standards the industry has been a success. Even the lowliest laborers are proud of what they do at Alang. There is no ship too big to be torn apart this way. More important the economic effects are substantial. Alang and the industries that have sprung from it provide a livelihood, however meager, for perhaps as many as a million Indians.”
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Environmentalists, instead of welcoming this approach, have pressured governments around the world to stop the practice. However, the fact remains that workers at Alang are better paid and probably safer than their counterparts back in the poor provinces of Orissa, Bihar, and Uttal Pradesh. To provide housing and better conditions is financially impractical for a developing country like India where 45 percent of the population is living below the poverty line. (6)
Says one of the workers, “The question I want to ask the environmentalists is if you should want to die first of starvation or pollution?” An 18 year old woman said, “It's dangerous, yes, but no money is more dangerous. No money means you'll die of hunger.”
The e-waste problem has been building for decades. Increased observation of adverse health effects from e-waste sites calls for protecting human health and the environment from e-waste contamination. Even if e-waste exposure intervention and prevention efforts are implemented. Legacy contamination will remain, necessitating increased awareness of e-waste as a major environmental health threat. (2) Then there is the remaining issue of the reaction of some workers as discussed above.
References
Karin Lundgren, “The global impact of e-waste: addressing the challenge,” ilo.org/sector, December 20, 2012
Michelle Heacock et al., “E-waste and harm to vulnerable populations: a growing global problem,” Environmental Health Perspectives,124, Number 5, May 2016
Tom Risen, “America's toxic electronic waste trade,” usnews.com, April 22, 2016
“Recycled cell phones—a treasure trove of valuable metals,” USGS Fact Sheet, 2006-3097, July 2006
“The World's Worst 2013: The Top Ten Toxic Threats, Cleanup, Progress and Ongoing Challenges,” New York, Blacksmith Institute, July 25, 2014
William Langwiesche, The Outlaw Sea, (New York, North Point Press, 2004), 229
Jack Dini is author of Challenging Environmental Mythology. He has also written for American Council on Science and Health, Environment & Climate News, and Hawaii Reporter.
Electronic product innovations satisfy many needs, including the desire of people to stay connected around the globe. As new products are continually introduced into the marketplace, consumers replace existing electronic products that are damaged or simply outdated. The resulting mass of electronic products discarded is becoming the fastest growing waste stream in the world leading to polluted environments. (1)
Electronic waste (e-waste) which includes all types of electrical or electronic equipment is produced in staggering quantities, estimated globally to be 41.8 million tons in 2014. E-waste recycling is a source of much needed income in many low to middle income countries. However, its handling and disposal in underdeveloped countries is often unsafe and leads to contaminated environments. Rudimentary and uncontrolled processing methods often result in substantial harmful chemical exposures among vulnerable populations, including women and children. E-waste hazards have not yet received the attention they deserve in research and public health agendas. (2)
