February 24, 2005

Made in Taiwan. Buried in China.

Every year, the United States sends millions of tons of e-waste to Third World countries despite regulations designed to prevent this. The European Union, though, is pushing for more stringent guidelines.

By Aleks Krotoski

The victim of a particularly thorough domestic downsizing, a rejected personal computer, sits on the curbside, awaiting the local electronics recycling company.

The former owners believe they are acting responsibly with their waste, but this PC, like 80 percent of the consumer electronics ostensibly recycled through local organizations, is headed for one of the most impoverished villages in the world, welcomed by the population because disposal of the Western waste provides income and work for the local residents.

However, these abandoned consumer electronics do more than just help support the economy. The computers, mobile phones, digital cameras and MP3 players are veritable construction kits of noxious chemicals, the destruction of which can trigger asthma attacks, respiratory infections, emphysema, cancer, blood and brain disorders and liver damage.

Developing countries are littered with First World electrical detritus; the streets of exotically-named cities like Taizhou and Guiyu are lined with mother boards, graphics cards and deadly CRTs piled in mountains held together with insulated wire, micro-chips and glass.

In 1998, seven million tons of high-tech refuse -- dubbed e-waste -- was produced by the United States, and analysts indicate that the figure has increased by more than three percent every year.

Landfill costs and competitive prices from impoverished developing countries make it cheaper to send U.S. waste abroad than to keep it at home. This practice is frowned upon by international governments, yet the United States continues to ignore these directives.

To get past Environmental Protection Agency regulations, vast quantities of recycled materials are separated domestically and then transferred through a difficult-to-trace series of buyers, sellers and brokers. Ultimately, they arrive by in impoverished cities in China, Pakistan and India, where cheap labor means every last screw can be salvaged and sold back to manufacturers.

International pressure may someday change the U.S. policies. One such directive, the Basel Convention, was initiated after high-profile media exposure of hazardous waste disposals in the late eighties. Activist organizations such as the Seattle-based Basel Action Network (BAN) have worked to ban hazardous waste exports, but American electronics continue to litter the Third World.

Richard Gutierrez, toxic trade analyst with BAN, says that unless something changes, illegal trade will continue unfettered.

"In terms of trade in electrical waste, the U.S. government doesn't consider it illegal," Gutierrez says. "The existing laws in the U.S. allow U.S. exporters to illegally trade."

Indeed, as one of the largest consumers of electronic products in the world, the United States is one of the few countries which hasn't yet ratified the Basel Convention.