Pulse Magazine
Spring 2017
Reuse. Reread. Recycle
E-Waste: Garbage of the 21st Century
Photo Courtesy of Flickr user JohnJMatlock
By Kaeli Van Cott
Over the course of your life, you’ll probably own about 29 cell phones according to recent research. Where do they all go?
Most likely, these phones have made their way to China or Ghana. Although these countries, especially China, have systems for recycling and repurposing these electronics, what’s happening there is not always safe. Recyclers often pick apart phones for materials to repurpose and poison themselves as a result.
This is the growing problem e-waste presents. Despite technological advancements and the benefits of the “newer” and “better” in society, our environment takes two steps back with the growing number of discarded cell phones.
E-waste is short for electronic waste and describes the phenomenon of discarded laptops, cell phones, and other devices that have accumulated in the United States and around the world. What makes e-waste so harmful are the chemicals in these products that can cause damage to both people and the environment, as well as the methods that are used to eliminate the waste or recycle it.
Richard Maxwell co-writes a column and has published a book with social scientist Toby Miller under the same title: “Greening the Media.” In studying e-waste and the media coverage of it, the Queens College professor and Media Studies Chair has seen more awareness since first studying e-waste, but recognizes that there are still plenty of people who have never heard of e-waste and as a result, the way it is handled can be somewhat unmonitored.
“I think there’s more awareness, but overall it’s hard to track,” he said. “For it to be electronic waste, it needs to be labeled ‘electronic waste.’ For it to be tracked as waste that needs to be controlled and monitored for health purposes, it has to be labeled that way. So much of that stuff is just thrown away.”
Miller, now working as a professor at UC Riverside, sees the way e-waste is viewed and misunderstood as a worldwide problem.
“Countries like China and India are developing middle classes. They’re becoming not only dumps for e-waste but also sources of it,” he said.
“There are now lots of people who own cell phones, tablets and laptops and so on there, and who get rid of them by dumping them. It’s no longer simply a kind of ‘ the first world dumps on third world’ problem. It’s a worldwide one.”
-Toby Miller
After getting rid of an old phone or laptop in the United States, it’s hard to tell where it will end up because many companies and recyclers who promise to properly dispose of the e-waste are misleading. In the United States, the disposal of e-waste is a state’s right and is not overseen by the federal government. Certain states like Colorado have tried to combat the ambiguous recycling issue by enacting their own legislation. In 2012, the state issued a ban prohibiting the dumping of e-waste at solid waste landfills in the states.
New York, on the other hand, has less structured legislation on the issue. According to the Department of Environmental Conservation, The New York State Electronic Equipment Recycling and Reuse Act “requires manufacturers to provide free and convenient recycling of electronic waste to most consumers in the state.” There is no mention if there is a system in place that keeps recyclers’ practices in check, but the Department of Environmental Conservation details what collection sites and recycling facilities should do.
According to Miller, however, the actions of states like New York are not enough to combat the problem of e-waste:
“The Justice Department, the Government Accountability Office, and others have established that there are many U.S. companies that pose as recyclers as if they were using advanced technology to pick away at the remnants of the waste for reusable things like copper and gold and tantalum,” he said. “In fact, they send them off at a much cheaper rate to countries to be recycled by children and by analphabetic workers. These children are often young girls exposing themselves to dozens of carcinogens.”
Adam Minter has a different idea about U.S. waste and its effects abroad, which started with his own experiences with e-waste before leaving the country.
“My first contact with what most people would consider e-waste was in my family’s scrap yard. I watched that waste stream change over time, as it became more than televisions. It started to become video game consoles, VCRs, PCs and even laptops.”
This early exposure to e-waste gave Minter a different perspective, and in writing his book, “Junkyard Planet: Travels in the Billion-Dollar Trash Trade,” he learned that e-waste often isn’t amounting to just waste. There’s a hidden economy that e-waste provides; the United States doesn’t simply pay to dump its waste on less fortunate countries. It has everything to do with the reusing and repurposing culture that is thriving abroad, and a huge miscommunication about how e-waste is being handled.
“Usually when you see pictures of this stuff in open fields and open riverbanks, that’s probably 5% of e-waste, or probably less,” he said.
Photo Courtesy of Matthew Hurst http://bit.ly/2qgTmZ4
Minter acknowledges the thought process that surrounds e-waste being brought to less economically stable places but thinks it has more to do with stereotypes perpetuated in the Western world and Western media, despite the actual capabilities and progress being made.
“Because e-waste as a journalistic endeavor is so visual, there’s nothing more powerful from a visual perspective than a sweating black man working over a computer in the sun in Africa,” he said. “That image confirms so many deeply-rooted prejudices within Western society, and it’s very, very difficult to argue against that even if the argument is ‘he’s not doing what you think he’s doing.’ There’s actually something much more complicated and wonderful going on here. If anybody’s being exploited, it’s the idiot that sold him that computer for so cheap. It’s these visuals and our cultural association with waste and distressed minorities. It all gets wrapped up in this.”
During his experiences in China, Minter saw firsthand that not every area of the country had a huge dumping ground like the ones in images that might come up in a Google search for e-waste. His experiences in Guangdong, China, especially, opened his eyes to the profit side of old electronics.
“At that time what was being done with it in Guangdong was that you had trained workers going through the circuit boards and pulling capacitors and chips and whatever was recoverable and reusable off of those circuit boards,” he said. “Those pieces would be cataloged carefully and they would be sold into secondhand markets for reuse.”
Unlike the United States, which thrives on a system ditching old technology for new, Minter claims that Chinese workers in this sector consider what components of a product might be reusable even when the product itself is too old.
Like China, Minter describes Ghana as a market that thrives on reusing products. When spending time in Ghana, he noticed that many old laptops were without screens, leaving just the base of the computer.
“There’s a huge market for them, especially in northern Ghana,” he said. “If you go into any of the repair shops within Ghana, you’ll see them preparing these things. Even if they get a unit that can’t be reused, the board on the inside of it will definitely be reused. It shifts the paradigm a bit about how we tend to think of this.”
When spending time in Savelugu, Ghana, Minter met a man repairing a considerably old television and found himself in disbelief. He took down the serial numbers to check on his own, and sure enough, the TV was as antiquated as the repairman claimed: it was 40 years old.
“My definition and your definition and some technician in Savelugu’s definition of what is broken is very different,” he said. “Imposing Western definitions of what is broken is really misguided and it’s certainly not a good approach to sustainability and resource extraction or, for that matter, business. In my opinion, the standard for ‘broken’ and the standard for what e-waste is isn’t what some guy in Seattle is telling us. It’s what the guy in Savelugu is telling us as he repairs a 40-year-old TV.”
The more there is to learn about e-waste, the more disheartening it is to learn how complicit any technology user is—especially those in the United States and Europe. Although e-waste is still being studied and understood, there are existing groups and individuals working to push the boundaries of how we take care of e-waste and change the market for technology.
One such person is Elizabeth Jardim, a senior corporate campaigner at Greenpeace. While focusing on the IT sector, she pushes companies to rethink their business model and improve their practices in terms of being sustainable and eco-friendly.
This February, Greenpeace released a study claiming that 7.1 billion smartphones have been produced since 2007. In 2014 alone, e-waste from smaller products like phones was estimated to amount to 3 million tons, despite 16 percent of global e-waste actually being recycled.
The numbers can be overwhelming, but the solution to this ongoing problem begins with the companies producing phones reevaluating their model.
Photo Courtesy of AvWijk via WikiCommons
“Rather than a device being done after two years, making something that would last more like five or ten years,” Jardim said. “To do that, it means the device has to be durable but it has to be easily repaired or upgraded. If something like the battery or the screen breaks, it has to be easy and simple for a regular consumer to replace just that part without having to replace the whole device. Just doubling the lifespan of a device by the same principle would be half of the impacts, over time, on the planet.”
Samsung has also been a major target for Greenpeace’s efforts, especially after the recall of their Galaxy Note 7 phones, which were spontaneously combusting due to a manufacturing defect. Although Samsung collected the faulty phones after issuing an international recall, Jardim and Greenpeace are concerned about what they will do with these devices after they’ve all been collected.
“In all, there were 4.3 million devices that got called back in and we were really concerned that they would put them in a landfill or burn them,” she said. “They have said since that they won’t do that, but they haven’t said what they will do. A lot of energy and a lot of human effort have gone into making these products so if the problem’s isolated in the batteries, is there a way they could refurbish the other parts or recycle the materials so that it’s not all for waste?”
Beyond that, she is calling for companies to use more recycled materials in the production of phones and is calling for the IT sector as a whole to adopt renewable data centers.
“The IT sector is receptive to these ideas,” she said. “When it comes to renewable energy, 60 years ago they were saying, ‘It’s not really possible. There’s not enough renewable energy out there to power data centers. Data centers need a lot of power.’ Now here we are, and almost 20 companies have made commitments to be 100 percent renewably powered for their data centers.” Companies like Apple, Facebook and Google have made these commitments, but Jardim and other corporate campaigners are pushing for actual strategies to outline these changes.
Although corporations are planning to step up, e-waste involves another major contributor: consumers. How can consumers be better to the environment while still using technology in their everyday lives? Jardim gives a suggestion much, much easier than you might think.
“Just keep the phone you have if it still works,” she said. “There’s no need to prematurely upgrade. Even if your contracts up, a lot of us are programmed to think after 24 months after we [paid off the cost of a cell phone]. It’s ‘Oh now we get an upgrade!’ Your phone still works. You don’t need to rush it.”
If your phone breaks, she suggests using sources online like ifixit.com to learn tips and tricks and consider buying a refurbished phone. One of the best refurbished phones, according to Jardim, is Fairphone. This phone uses recycled materials and conflict-free minerals, meaning the components of the phone aren’t put together by forced workers in war zones like the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Another way to push for the elimination of e-waste is coverage of environmental issues in media. Patrick Murphy has studied the association between media and the environment, and suggests the lack of environmental coverage is poor and could be greatly improved. Throughout his time as at Temple University’s School of Media and Communication, he has picked up on some problematic trends in journalism as a whole. He claims the decline of investigative journalists and lack of an environmental section in major newspapers or magazines contribute to the lack of knowledge about e-waste.
“Fortune Magazine and financial magazines awarded Exxon Mobil the ‘Green Company of the Year,’ and it tells you something about the thinking there, right?” he said. “You would tag an oil company with green company of the year, like really? This is the best that we could come up with?”
In terms of e-waste, the problem surrounds us, and could probably be even more prominent when you go home and open up your junk drawer full of old headphones, remotes, cell phones and so on. What’s the best way to prevent e-waste? According to experts like Jardim, it’s easier to use what you have, and think of cell phones, laptops, tablets and other materials like you would a car. When cars need an oil change or new breaks, there’s no need for a brand new car. Just fix the parts and think a little harder about where you put your waste.