Green IT Toolkit

Tackling the problem of high-tech trash

Tags:
High-tech,
Recycling,
Environment,
PCs

Stefanie Olsen CNET News

Published: 07 Jul 2006 12:35 BST

…but the fact is that it's an expensive process to disassemble electronics and recover the materials. So whether you pay a fee when you return or buy it to cover the cost, or it's folded into the price, somebody has to pay for it. Manufacturers should be building that into the cost of creating (electronics).

So what you’re saying is that there needs to be a national system?
Yeah. Right now there are five or six states including California, Washington, Minnesota, Maine, Maryland and Massachusetts (with regulations). And it's so confusing for consumers, manufacturers, businesses and institutions who are buying and dealing with equipment if every single state has different regulations. So at some point, you have to have something that is uniform across the country.

Can you put the amount of e-waste in context with overall solid waste produced in the United States?
The statistic that government agencies and others have been citing is that electronic waste is now the fastest-growing part of the municipal waste stream. It's a little bit hard to compare the e-waste to all other solid waste for the simple reason that it hasn't yet been separated out as a special category of waste. The EPA has just recently in the past year or so decided that electronics should be considered differently from other appliance waste, and so it just hasn't been counted separately. As an individual consumer, I would say just make sure, whether it's something small like a mobile phone or something large like an old printer or desktop computer: Do not put it in the trash.

That's in contrast to projections from the National Safety Council, which estimated that the number of discarded computers has already begun declining.
I think those numbers are old. They did one of the first studies on this stuff, and a lot of those figures are still around. But it's not going down. All the governments who've been looking to this agree that the e-waste stream is growing faster than any other part of the municipal waste stream.

So what happens if I throw my computer into the trash?
Well, you live in California. So, you cannot throw your computer into the trash without risking some kind of penalty.

If I threw a computer into my trash in Oregon, where there isn't any regulation against it, chances are if it got buried deep in and nobody saw it, it would simply get carted off with the rest of the neighbourhood garbage. I did ask my local carting company what they do when they see this stuff, and they said they actually pick something out and get it to either a recycler or some reuse organisation. But if nobody sees it or it's damaged and there's no regulation against putting electronics into the trash, it's just going to go to the landfill or an incinerator if that's where the municipal garbage goes.

And there it doesn't biodegrade, obviously.
No, the EPA has estimated that electronics are contributing a significant amount of lead and other heavy metals to landfills, and scientists (say) synthetic chemicals are leaching out of landfills.

What's the ultimate threat to our health and the environment?
It depends on what the toxin is, but heavy metals, things like lead, cadmium and barium, are seriously hazardous to health if they get into the water system or they move around as particulates. They can cause respiratory system damage; they can damage nervous systems; and it depends on which heavy metal you're talking about.

The plastics in electronics have flame retardants in them for the most part, and those particles are getting out of the equipment, particularly when it's discarded and those turn out to be bio-accumulative, which means they can accumulate in fat tissue and they're working their way through the food web and they seem to interfere with endocrine functions.

Are some consumer electronic manufacturers more responsible than others? If so, which?
It's almost impossible to say. The European Union has mandatory electronics recycling requiring that the use of half-a-dozen different toxic substances is curtailed or eliminated. And because the high-tech industry is such a global industry and virtually every major manufacturer sells into an international market, it's just not very profitable or feasible to make equipment to different countries’ specifications. So, for the most part, manufacturers are meeting the standards worldwide.

Beginning this year, most manufacturers are going to be making electronics without lead solder. There will be some variations but, for the most part, all the major manufacturers are trying to move away from using some of these toxic substances, whether it's been mandated or not. But because it's such a proprietary industry, it's a little bit hard to find out exactly what they're using as a substitute.

As consumers, how can we be more responsible?
The first thing is, as an individual consumer, I would say just make sure, whether it's something small like a mobile phone or something large like an old printer or desktop computer: Do not put it in the trash. Don't put it out on the street with one of those little helpful tags that says, "Free, take me", because if you're ready to put it on the street, chances are it's not working.

Get it to a responsible reuse organisation that can get it refurbished and extend its life, or find out what your workplace is doing with its used electronic equipment. A lot of businesses have some kind of take-back program as part of their purchasing agreement, because they've realised that used electronics present a number of liabilities if they are not discarded properly.

You mentioned that there were some silver linings to the story...
One of the things that is encouraging is that, once attention has been drawn to the fact that electronics have some serious environmental impact at the end of their lives and in the manufacturing process, improvements are continually being made. You can question whether it's happening fast enough or comprehensively enough, but everybody is now aware of the problem and working on it somehow.