Electronic Waste Recycling - Why Current System Isn't Working

It's hard to recycle such toxic products

Electronic products contain a great many chemicals, many of them toxic, plus specific toxic components, such as batteries and lamps containing mercury. Often, these toxic components are very difficult and time-consuming to remove. This is what makes e-waste expensive and difficult to recycle. Recycling companies using the best available processing technology still end up sending a large portion of processed e-waste to smelters. Smelters are a low-end and often dirty recycling option.

The most effective way to recycle e-waste involves dismantling by hand. Since e-waste recycling can be dangerous to workers and therefore requires expensive safeguards, the best and most environmentally sound recycling is also more expensive.

To gain customers by offering cheaper services, many businesses offering "recycling" services look for short cuts and cheap options. This usually means recycling less of the material, shortcutting worker safety, shipping the waste overseas or using prison labor in the US.

As long as the economic and regulatory conditions encourage (or allow) low end "recycling" - export, prisons, or dangerous working conditions - it will be hard to have a viable recycling industry and truly sustainable system to address e-waste. But the market driven system COULD work better if there were effective standards and drivers in place, (including laws requiring producer takeback, a ban on the export of e-waste to developing countries, and restrictions on using prison labor for recycling). And recycling would be much less expensive if companies used less toxic materials in the first place.

Most E-Waste isn't recycled

Less than ten percent of discarded computers are currently recycled, with the remainder stockpiled or disposed of improperly. Currently the most lucrative 'solution' to this toxic waste problem is usually to export it to developing countries. Fifty to eighty percent of the e-waste collected for recycling is being exported to developing countries, including China and Nigeria, which have an inadequate infrastructure to accommodate the hazardous properties of e-waste.

Due to horrific working conditions and weak labor standards in many of the developing countries where e-waste is sent, women and children are often directly exposed to lead and other hazardous materials when dismantling the electronic products to recover valuable parts for resell. Workers in China disassembling e-waste throw the unwanted leaded glass into former irrigation ditches, and dump pure acids and dissolved heavy metals directly into their rivers. Piles of wires are burned in open fires, creating dioxins and furans.

More Information about E-Waste Export Dumping
From the Basel Action Network - Two films and reports:

- Exporting Harm - The High Tech Trashing of Asia Info
- The Digital Dump - Exporting Reuse and Abuse to Africa Info

- Recycling of Electronic Waste in China and India: Workplace and Environmental Contamination, from Greenpeace International. Info

Use of prison labor in recycling

Another "low-road" practice is for recyclers to send their products to prisons for disassembly. Prison workers usually earn less than one dollar per hour, so use of prison labor further undercuts our domestic recycling industry. Because these "workers" are prisoners, they are not entitled to collective bargaining rights, and are not automatically protected by OSHA. And the prison recycling shops have had some safety problems. E-waste recycling at Atwater prison in California began operations in 2002, but has been shut down several times, due to major health and safety problems, including a major fire in 2003.

More Information on E-waste recycling and prison labor:

Toxic Sentence: E-Waste, Prisons, Economic and Environmental Justice
A fact sheet from the Computer Takeback Campaign. View fact sheet (PDF).

Tale of Two Systems: Corporate Strategies for Electronics Recycling.
This study by Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition compares two very different e-waste recycling plants: the Micro Metallics plant used by HP, and the Atwater Prison recycling plant, run by the federal UNICOR program. (At the time of this report, Dell was using this facility, but Dell no longer uses prison recycling facilities.) View Study (PDF).

See How CRT TV's Are Recycled

In Japan, the law requires TVs to be recycled by the manufacturers. So while Panasonic is a leader in the fight against Producer Responsibility laws in the US, in Japan, they proudly highlight their recycling activities and achievements. Click here to see their tour of how they recycle TVs in their "METEC" recycling facility in Japan, and how resources are recovered from CRT TVs.