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What Can We Do About the Growing E-waste Problem?

When China banned 24 kinds of solid waste last September, countries such as the U.S., the United Kingdom, Australia, and Japan realized they had a big problem. Until last year, China accepted 70 percent of the world’s electronic E-waste—discarded computers, cell phones, printers, televisions, microwaves, smoke alarms, and other electronic equipment and parts.

After China stopped accepting this e-waste out of concern for its environment, Europe and North America began shipping more of it to Southeast Asia—but now Vietnam and Thailand, whose ports have been overwhelmed, are curbing imported e-waste as well.

In 2016, the world’s population discarded 49 million tons of e-waste (equivalent to about 4,500 Eiffel Towers). It’s estimated that by 2021, that number will grow to more than 57 million tons.

Why the upsurge in e-waste?

Technology is becoming more and more integrated into every aspect of our lives.

Meanwhile, the life span of devices is getting shorter—many products will be thrown away once their batteries die to be replaced with new appliances. Companies intentionally plan the obsolescence of their goods by updating the design or software and discontinuing support for older models. Hence, buying a new product is usually cheaper and more accessible than repairing an old one. Meanwhile, the companies continue to profit from steady sales.

And because prices are dropping, electronic devices are in demand worldwide as a growing middle class goes digital. Globally, half of all households now have internet access, and 7.7 billion people have cell phones.

What’s in e-waste?

Electronic devices are made of a complex mix of gold, silver, copper, platinum, palladium, lithium, cobalt, and other valuable elements. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) says, “One metric ton of circuit boards can contain 40 to 800 times the amount of gold and 30 to 40 times the amount of copper mined from one metric ton of ore in the United States.”

But electronic devices also comprise toxic heavy metals like lead, mercury, cadmium, and beryllium, polluting PVC plastic, and hazardous chemicals, such as brominated flame retardants, which can harm human health and the environment.

In 2016, the estimated value of recoverable materials in global e-waste was $64.6 billion, but only 20 percent of it was recycled correctly to recoverable materials. Much of the rest is dumped in landfills where toxic chemicals can leach from the e-waste and contaminate the water supply.

As more people buy electronic equipment, manufacturers are beginning to face shortages of the raw materials needed to make their products, so reclaiming and reusing the materials from discarded products and waste—a process called urban mining—makes economic and environmental sense. A recent study in China found that mining copper, gold, and aluminum from ore costs 13 times more than recovering the metals through urban e-waste mining.

The state of e-waste recycling

Proper or formal e-waste recycling usually involves disassembling the electronics, separating and categorizing the contents by material, and cleaning them.

Items are then shredded mechanically for further sorting with advanced separation technologies. Companies must adhere to health and safety rules and use pollution-control technologies that reduce the health and environmental hazards of handling e-waste. All this makes proper recycling expensive. As a result, many companies and countries illegally export their e-waste to developing countries where recycling is cheap.

The U.S., the second largest producer of e-waste after China, produced 10 million tons of e-waste in 2012, over 64 pounds per person.

At these informal recycling workshops, men, women, and children recover valuable materials by burning devices to melt away non-valuable materials, using mercury and acids to recover gold, and dismantling machines by hand to reclaim other materials of value.

Usually, they do not wear protective equipment and are unaware they are handling dangerous materials.

Research has found that inhaling toxic chemicals and direct contact with hazardous e-waste materials (even in some formal e-waste recycling settings) result in increases in spontaneous abortions, stillbirths, premature births, reduced birth weights, mutations, congenital malformations, abnormal thyroid function, increased lead levels in the blood, decreased lung function, and neurobehavioral disturbances. Moreover, e-waste toxins contaminate the air, soil, and groundwater.

In the face of these health and environmental hazards, however, many people in developing countries earn a living by dismantling, refurbishing, repairing, and reselling used electronic devices. Guiyu, China, is often considered the e-waste capital of the world, with 75 percent of households involved in the recycling business. Informal recycling is practiced in India, Nigeria, Ghana, and the Philippines.

In addition to its health hazards, informal recycling can pose security risks because while formal recyclers in the U.S. usually require wiping devices clean of data, informal recycling does not.

Criminals search e-waste for credit card numbers and other financial information—for example, government contracts and lucrative agreements with the U.S.

Wealthy countries send about 23 percent of their e-waste to developing countries yearly. This is ongoing even though the Union and 186 states have ratifratifying the Convention, which works to minimize hazardous waste transfer from developed countries. The U.S…….., the only developed country that has not ratified the Basel Convention, has agreements that allow it to ship hazardous waste to developing countries.

What U.S. laws govern e-waste?

No federal law in the U.S. mandates the recycling of e-waste or forbids e-waste from being exported to developing countries. Twenty-eight states and the District of Columbia have electronic recycling laws, which vary in approach. Some states subcontract with companies to operate a statewide collection system; others require manufacturers to meet minimum recycling targets based on their sales.

The problem with a patchwork of laws is that no state has enough market share to compel manufacturers to design greener or more durable products. By contrast, the European Union’s Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive represents the entire E.U. market. It thus has the clout to set higher standards for all electronic products sold in the E.U. Its laws requiring manufacturers to help pay for recycling have resulted in an e-waste recycling rate of 35 percent, higher than that of the U.S.

A federal law in the U.S. could help develop a more robust e-waste recycling infrastructure by setting targets and establishing financing schemes for collection systems and recycling plants. It could also offer a tax break or rebate to companies that process their used devices and help prevent the export of e-waste to developing countries. However, a federal law is not likely to happen under this administration.

A problem requiring multiple solutions

Recycling alone will not be enough with the flood of e-waste growing worldwide. Some other ideas and solutions are being researched, considered, or practiced worldwide. Hopefully, they will inspire more adoption of best practices.

Designing better products

To reduce e-waste, manufacturers must design safer, more durable, repairable, and recyclable electronics. Most importantly, this means using less toxic materials. Chemical engineers at Stanford University are developing the first fully biodegradable electronic circuit using natural dyes that dissolve in acid with a pH 100 times weaker than vinegar. One group of scientists is pulverizing e-waste into nanodust by cooling the various materials, then grinding them into homogenous powders that are “easy to reuse.” Canada-based Ronin8  has developed a technology that uses minimal water and energy as it separates metals from non-metals through sonic vibrations in recycled water.

Today, it’s not a priority to design goods that can be reused or remanufactured. However, for a few years, companies experimented with modular phones that enabled consumers to upgrade parts of their phones instead of entirely replacing them. Google, L.G., and Motorola all released modular models. Still, they failed because they were clumsier and more costly and because consumers expected their devices to come with every feature as standard. Perhaps as consumers become more aware of the e-waste problem, companies will be able to design a modular phone with more market appeal.

The right to repair

In addition to recycling, it’s also essential to be able to repair and reuse the devices we have. But even if you know how to and want to improve your electronic device, you might be deterred because your product’s software is subject to copyright. The copyright often forbids consumers by law to tinker with or reverse-engineer the device or use an unauthorized repairer. Ifixit.org demands the right to repair machines and teaches people how to do it.

Extended Producer Responsibility

Extended producer responsibility requires companies that make products to be responsible for their management and disposal at the end of their lives. The idea is to turn waste materials into a resource for producing new products. The New York State Electronic Equipment Recycling and Reuse Act requires manufacturers to provide consumers with free and convenient e-waste recycling.

Hong Kong, a prime dumping ground for U.S. e-waste and a massive producer of e-waste itself, deals with 77,000 tons of e-waste yearly (80 percent of which is sent to Africa and Southeast Asia for recycling). It has just instituted a producer responsibility system that will require suppliers and sellers of electronic products to pay for the free removal, collection, handling, and proper disposal of items.

More convenient recycling

EcoATM provides a convenient and safe way to recycle and sell old cell phones, MP3 players, and tablets. Consumers can bring their devices to one of 2,700 kiosks in the U.S. The EcoATM will evaluate it based on the model and condition and pay you immediately. The items are then either reused or responsibly recycled.

China’s largest internet company, Baidu, and the United Nations Development Programme developed a smartphone app called Baidu Recycle. Chinese users can indicate the item they want to recycle, enter its size, the date it’s to be picked up, and their name and address, then submit a photo of it. Within 24 hours, an accredited recycler comes to pick it up. In two months, 11,000 devices were recycled.

Better recycling

Nickolas Themelis, professor emeritus of earth and environmental engineering and director of the Earth Engineering Center at Columbia University, said that today’s best and only economical large-scale recycling in North America uses a copper smelter in Canada. He explained that when e-waste is fed into the copper smelter, precious metals like silver, gold, platinum, palladium, selenium, and others dissolve in molten copper, which acts like a solvent at high temperatures. Though it recovers only metals that dissolve in copper, this integrated smelting process combined with refining is a relatively inexpensive method of reclaiming e-waste metals. In Rouyn-Noranda, Quebec, the smelter receives about 50,000 tons of e-waste yearly. “The model of Noranda with a small [e-waste] collection company in the U.S. and a larger one in Canada and a big smelter could be done in other countries,” said Themelis.

To reduce health and environmental hazards while maintaining the informal recycling system that supports so many people, India and China are looking at ways to integrate simple and formal recycling systems. One strategy would incentivize informal recyclers to divert e-waste to legal collection or recycling centers.

The goal of a circular economy

 A circular economy aims to keep products and all their materials in circulation at their highest value at all times or for as long as possible. Stephanie Kersten-Johnston, an adjunct professor in the Sustainability Management program at Columbia University and director of sustainable business at Heineken USA, explained that “highest value” means what’s closest to the original product to get the most out of the embedded value in the material and the labor that went into creating the product. Europe has made the circular economy a goal for the whole continent.

What you can do about e-waste

The best thing you can do is resist buying a new device until needed.

Before you recycle your device, seal up any broken parts in separate containers so that hazardous chemicals don’t leak. Wear latex gloves and a mask if you’re handling something broken.

Find a responsible recycler. Recyclers with the E-Steward label on their websites have been certified to meet the cleanest and most responsible standards for e-waste recycling. E-Steward recyclers also clear your data in their recycling process.