Opinion

Considering e-waste disposal

In the sea of noteworthy news of late — Bush being reelected, Arafat dying, Condoleezza Rice becoming the new Secretary of State, U.S. army invading Falluja, etc. — wading through, to make sense of it all, has become quite a challenge. Maybe posing even more of a challenge, however, is the struggle to get past the big headliners to stuff that isn’t making huge waves but remains no less important.

Consider an announcement made by China about two weeks ago. The nation announced to the world that it would ban all imports of scrap electronics in hopes of cleaning up its environment. Lost in the cacophony of other news, this obscure bit may seem to pale in comparison to the importance of other headline news, but admittedly, computers, phones, televisions, etc. have become essentials for most college students. In the fast paced world of technological innovations, these things become old rather quickly, however.

For example, while many a fond memory may be wrapped in that good ole’ computer — a frantic late night paper here or a beer spilled accidentally on its keyboard letters there — when push comes to shove, saying sayonara to the computer’s familiar plastic exterior remains pretty easy, hardly garnering a second thought. Out with the old, in the with new, right?

Unfortunately, when you say good-bye someone else says hello to this electronic waste. In most cases, this “hello” is a most malignant welcome for all those “someones” who happen to be heirs of the discarded electronics also known as e-waste.

Still, this news may be lacking in connection and pertinence to register on most people’s news radar. So, let’s pick it apart by tackling those infamous four interrogative “W’s” to dissect e-waste’s noteworthiness.

Commencing with the “what”: E-waste consists of the televisions, commercial and household electronics, monitors, PCs, packaging, cell phones, etc. that mysteriously disappear when they have become outdated and less useful. In the United States alone, we produce 2,124,400 tons of electronic waste, while only a miniscule amount of it is reused (3 percent of computers in the United States, for example).

That’s not the whole story, however. Like a destructive army against human and environmental health, this e-waste not only takes up space, but it is often highly toxic. It’s quite easy to name almost any part of the body and find someway that exposure to the components of e-waste harms it; the PVCs, PCBs, mercury, arsenic, chromium, lead, cadium, dioxins, CFCs and the list could literally continue for pages more, manifest as quite the murderous arsenal of cancer causing agents, organ destroyers, mutators, pollutants, child killers, development stuntors and hazard generators.

Now, onto the “who.” That’s simple enough. The main actors in this story are consumers (that’s us) and the people from other nations who are bequeathed with a majority of our electronic goods once we’re all through with them.

Often with bare hands, they pick apart the hundreds of different materials ranging from metals to plastics to wires to raw goods and other gizmos that are laced with toxins as part of the recycling process — “recycling” defined by moving it to another country and extricating some of the materials with cheap labor and then forgetting about the rest of the discarded electronic junk and toxins as it piles up in the streets of the new abode.

While over 100,000 people in China alone work in unregulated and unprotected conditions to recover leftover materials — many of them children — what happens to their person is that they get really sick or die from all the toxins. What happens to their village is that it becomes littered with electronic debris. And what happens to their surrounding environment is that it is affected for years by the environmental hazards that spew forth from the e-waste and the chemicals used to dismantle electronic parts.

For instance, lead levels in rivers near these electronic dump sites (which often serve also as the community’s main drinking source) are 300 times above what W.H.O. considers to be safe. Are these human and environmental casualties associated with electronic waste recycling of less import than other news? They are in fact very real problems, especially for those communities.

And where exactly are these communities? Mostly developing countries. Somewhere between 50 and 80 percent of e-waste collected for recycling in the U.S. ends up in China, Pakistan and India.

Why does this all occur? Because we get new stuff and the old stuff needs to go somewhere. It’s considerably cheaper to send it “there,” and we don’t really want that toxic stuff in our environment here. In addition, environmental and human health regulations are less stringent in those countries so they’re very attractive for spots of “recycling.” And, of course, there’s the old saying — out of sight, out of mind.

So, while we might not pay heed to news of China deciding it doesn’t want our junk anymore, it is quite a significant story. The “who” who always seems missing from this storyline is the companies that produce this toxic stuff in the first place. In the face of China’s poignant decision, rather than pawning our electronic castoffs on to a new country, we could take some accountability for our consumption.

A large step in the right direction would be demanding that corporations and businesses, the conspicuously absent “who” that produces these toxic loads, also deal with its waste. In fact, some such “take back” programs exist successfully in several countries in Europe. If the companies themselves were culpable for disposing of the old products, it would encourage production of better products with longer life spans, the employment of less toxic items and more efficient usage of materials. It’s time we ourselves say goodbye to our own irresponsibility and make companies more responsible. You say goodbye and make them say hello.

Kate Flick (kflick@badgerherald.com) is a junior majoring in sociology.