By Ramya Sridhar
As the technology industry booms in America today and old technologies are constantly being replaced be newer ones, it is curious to see where our used, old technologies go. The best we can do with our e-waste is to recycle them and hope that they can be used in some shape or form again without filling up landfills. Little do we know that recycling e-waste is a form of exploitation of other countries. E-cycling poses major health risks to the cheap laborers in developing nations. It pollutes those countries with our wastes. It even jeopardizes the integrity of our electrical devices we use every day through counterfeits. Is this recycling really the best way to deal with our old devices?
However, the recycling businesses benefit from the exportation of e-wastes. There are two aspects to why they export electronic waste in general. On one side, recyclers export to cut costs. A study commissioned by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) revealed that it was ten times cheaper to export e-waste to Asia than it was to process it in the United States. Therefore, e-waste recyclers, which include businesses and consumers, obviously ship them to the developing nations where they are dumped and unsafely taken apart. On the other side, recyclers export to yield profits. When e-waste is burned, valuable metals such as gold, silver, and palladium can be extracted. There is not enough metal to cover the costs of responsibly managing it in developed countries so it is exported to countries where workers are paid low wages and the infrastructure and legal framework is too weak to protect the environment workers and communities. This shows that businesses put their own self-interests above humanitarian ideals.
Cheap labor and fewer regulatory burdens are not only the most common reasons for interdependence on developing nations but also are the most unethical and unjust. Cheap labor means young women and children, low wages, and bad working conditions. In India, young boys smash computer batteries with mallets to recover cadmium, toxic flecks of which cover their hands and feet as they work. Women spend their days bent over baths of hot lead, “cooking” circuit boards so they can remove slivers of gold inside. These workers burn e-wastes which produce toxic chemicals and metals such as cadmium, mercury, and lead with the valuable metals. This level of toxins can cause cancer, irreversible neurological problems and be fatal to the laborers subjected to them. We are indirectly killing laborers in third world countries just with our wastes. Also, by exporting more in economic interest, whether it may be in e-wastes or manufacturing, we are encouraging the employment of cheap labor. The poor stay poor and the rich stay rich. The recycling businesses are portraying that we put our self-interest above our values in this circumstance. By cutting costs we are cutting lives in half and that seems to be okay to us. The worst part is that the majority of recyclers don’t have any idea where their wastes go, or that they are affecting lives of numerous people.
Nevertheless, most do know that E-waste poses a threat to the environment and to our health. We most definitely do not want it in landfills. Over time it corrodes, cracks, and leeches its toxic heavy metals into the landfill and into the ground or surface water we drink. Recycling e-wastes seems like a better option. Except, recycling has become a business in which companies “ship” wastes into impoverished countries such as China, India, Pakistan, and Nigeria for their cheap labor and valuable metals to be extracted. The countries in turn release toxins into the air by burning the e-wastes and therefore the developing countries are getting the immediate effects of this pollution from our wastes. People there are getting sick from our wastes. It is our responsibility that we recycle our wastes safely. It shouldn’t threaten the lives of other people and contaminate the planet we live in. We should especially not extend the responsibility and fault to other countries.
By e-cycling we are also unknowingly contributing to the development of fake technology. Exporting e-wastes increases the counterfeit industry. Counterfeiters in China reprocess used electronic components pulled from electronic waste. As a Senate Armed Services Committee report found, “much of the material used to make counterfeit electronic parts is electronic waste, or e-waste, shipped from the United States and the rest of the world to China.” Keeping e-wastes in the United States would keep them out of the hands of counterfeiters. There is already a strong network of responsible recyclers that is capable of scaling up to meet the additional demand.
We are all used to technology being a major part of our lives. It is second nature for us to upgrade our technology once in a while such as our phones. An average American owns five digital devices. These are devices more commonly replaced or upgraded. It is also common for us to buy an extra TV or replace household appliances to newer models. Sometimes we don’t take the time to fix a device ourselves and just replace them. All these practices today play a major role on the amount of e-waste produced. We don’t stop to think where our old devices go or what is done with them once we’ve used them. Recycling sounds good so we do it telling ourselves we’ve done our part. People should take responsibility of their e-wastes and recycle in organizations that deal with e-wastes in the best way possible. They need to be informed to the immoral and harmful aspects of bad e-waste recycling.
The electronics industry and the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) are leading the way in educating consumers and creating programs that make e-cycling as easy as purchasing. In 2012, 63 percent of consumers knew how and where to recycle their used electronics, up from 58 percent in 2010 (Alcorn par.3).Unfortunately, each state has its own laws on e-waste recycling which makes it harder implement uniform rules across state lines. The Responsible Electronic Recycling Act would make the exportation of e-wastes illegal in the United States as a whole. It is a bill introduced in 2011 in congress that has not been passed as of now. This would be a unifying law in the United States which would represent the country as a whole to make a change in the environment. By recycling materials responsibly on American soil, we can reduce the global and environmental impacts caused by exports to developing countries that lack appropriate safeguards.
It is critical for our environment, economic growth, and future innovations that we get e-cycling right. But it is also important we do it in a responsible and ethical way. Other countries, especially developing countries with cheap labor, should not be responsible for recycling our wastes and be exploited by businesses for doing so. Individual countries should be able to e-cycle their own wastes and by doing so, they can reduce the employment of laborers in developing nations. Developing nations should be uplifted economically in ways other than cheap labor in order for them to become developed nations. As technology advances, our electronics seem to get smaller such as our phone. We need to find a way to make our e-wastes get smaller as well.
