Electronics Waste

Introduction

Electronics waste, also referred to as e-waste or WEEE (Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment, pronounced “W triple E”), includes all electronic devices that have been discarded. Computers, televisions, cell phones, printers, ink cartridges, cameras, appliances, and hundreds of other objects become e-waste as soon as they have ceased to be useful. Although containing valuable substances such as steel, gold, and indium, e-waste is difficult to recycle because its ingredients are so mixed together. Some e-waste contains toxic metals such as lead and cadmium, toxic fire retardants, plastics, inks, and more. Much e-waste is shipped from the wealthier countries to poorer countries, where it is processed, often by hand, to retrieve its gold and other valuable contents. The recycling methods used are often intensely polluting.

Historical Background and Scientific Foundations

E-waste came into being with electronics in the early twentieth century. Radios containing vacuum tubes (thumb-sized devices that performed the same electronic job as a transistor) were the first commonplace electronic devices. However, electronic devices remained expensive for decades, and were therefore built to last as a long as possible: A telephone, for example, often lasted a lifetime. Far more toxic pollution was being caused by lead in plumbing, gasoline, batteries, and paint, and by uncontrolled or poorly controlled dumping of a host of other industrial chemicals. E-waste existed, but its impact was relatively unimportant.

After World War II (1939–1945), television became commonplace throughout the industrialized world. Televisions were larger, more complex, and shorter-lived than radios, and greatly enlarged the stream of e-waste (a term not coined until the 1990s). They also contained more toxic material, since their glass screens were impregnated with lead to block X-rays, and their circuitry, being more complex, contained more lead solder (a soft, silvery metal with a low melting point that is applied in molten form to connect electronic components to each other). By 2004 Americans alone had dumped into landfills about 325 million TV and computer screens containing some 1.6 billion pounds (726 million kg) of lead. This metal is now gradually leaching into groundwater in many places and may continue to do so for many thousands of years. Stereo systems, microwave ovens, home appliances, and other electronics-laden devices have also been contributing to the e-waste stream since becoming part of the consumer lifestyle after World War II.

Since the computer revolution of the 1970s, personal computers have became a major source of e-waste. Starting in the 1990s, many billions of personal music players, digital cameras, cell phones, and similar devices have been produced—and all become e-waste after a short time. In industrialized countries, the average working lifespan of a computer dropped from six years in 1997 to two years in 2005. A typical cell phone’s lifespan was even shorter. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimated that from 2000 until 2007, 500 million computers became obsolete in the United States alone. By 2004, between 20 and 50 million metric tons of e-waste were being generated globally every year, and e-waste was the most rapidly growing type of trash in municipal waste streams. At that time, it constituted about 5% of municipal waste, as much as plastic packaging. Moreover, even the large amounts of e-waste being thrown into landfills or containers shipped to Asia were not the whole story: About three quarters of all the computers ever sold in the United States were, as of 2004, sitting in attics, closets, and garages, awaiting eventual disposal.

Although lead-containing cathode ray tubes are gradually being replaced by flat screens that do not contain lead, flat screens contain mercury, another highly toxic metal. Other toxic substances that are common in e-waste are brominated flame retardants, cadmium, and hexavalent chromium. All these substances can leach from landfills or be released into the atmosphere by incineration. Burning plastic-coated wires and cables to retrieve their copper, as is done in open fields in China and other developing-nation e-waste destinations, releases an array of persistent toxic substances (dioxins, furans, etc.) that are concentrated up food chains.

Impacts and Issues

Because e-waste contains gold, copper, iron, and other valuable substances, it is a marketable commodity. The worldwide market for e-waste was growing in the early 2000s at about 8.8% per year (e.g., from $7.2 billion in 2004 to $11 billion in 2009, according to the United Nations Environment Programme). In the United States

WORDS TO KNOW

BASEL CONVENTION: A 1992 global treaty designed to restrict the movement of hazardous waste between nations, especially from developed to less-developed countries.

E-WASTE: A term describing electronic equipment at the end of its useful life. E-waste is the fastest-growing type of waste in the world.

FOOD CHAIN: A sequence of organisms, each of which uses the next lower member of the sequence as a food source.

in 2007, between 50% and 80% of e-waste collected for recycling was actually being shipped to China, Africa, or India for processing. In Europe, tens of thousands of tons of e-waste were being exported.

One difference between European and U.S. export of e-waste is that in Europe the practice was illegal, since most European countries had ratified the Basel Convention. This international treaty entered into force in 1992 and forbade the shipment between countries of toxic waste. The Basel Convention was designed to stop industrialized countries from dumping poisonous wastes on poor countries too economically desperate to worry about health or the environment. The United States has not ratified the Basel Convention, so export of e-waste or other toxic waste from the United States is not illegal.

Recycling of e-waste to recover its valuable metals can be done without releasing large amounts of pollution, but this is more expensive than the cruder methods used by junk processors in developing nations.

China officially banned the importation of e-waste in 2000, but this law has been widely ignored.

See Also Toxic Waste; Waste Transfer and Dumping

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Periodicals

Fountain, Henry. “Recycling That Harms the Environment and People.” New York Times (April 15, 2008).

Web Sites

Greenpeace International. “The E-Waste Problem in China.” http://www.greenpeace.org/china/en/campaigns/toxics/e-waste/the-e-waste-problem/ (accessed April 22, 2008).

United Nations Environment Programme. “E-Waste Management.” http://www.unep.fr/pc/pc/waste/e_waste.htm (accessed April 22, 2008).