Electronics create growing waste problem

Friday, January 10, 2003

Dear Marti,
I hear there’s a new center for recycling old electronics. Is there something harmful about throwing these things away?

Signed, Tom

If only there were some place named “away” where the items we toss wouldn’t come back to contaminate our air, water or soil. Our current versions of “away” (landfills and incinerators) were not designed to handle today’s modern waste, and our society’s system for recycling these materials hasn’t kept up with the pace of new product development. In an era when you can throw that winning touchdown on a hand-held video game, check the NASDAQ on your palm pilot, or watch news updates on your cell phone while buying nachos, the chemicals that end up as a mountain of toxic waste don’t just come from computers and TVs anymore. Discarded personal computers and consumer electronics—so-called “e-waste”—are creating a new, highly toxic waste stream in the industrialized world. The National Safety Council estimates that by 2004 there will be 315 million obsolete computers in the United States. And over the next decade, the transition to digital high-definition televisions alone could result in tens of millions of discarded TV’s containing thousands of tons of toxic lead.

Electronic products contain a host of toxic substances such as lead, mercury, cadmium, acids, and dioxin-like flame retardants that pose a serious threat to human health and the environment when improperly disposed. The EPA admits that all landfills will eventually leak, which means the hazardous material in computer and other electronic equipment will eventually leach into the groundwater and soil. To address this growing environmental concern, particularly important in high-tech Boulder County where per capita computer and electronic ownership is well above the national average, the City of Boulder and Eco-Cycle created the “Center for Hard-to-Recycle Materials,” more affectionately known as the CHaRM. The CHaRM was created to safely recycle electronic products like computers, TVs, and cell phones. Most of the electronic items are accepted for a fee to help recover the costs of marketing them. Call 303-444-6634 or visit www.ecocycle.org for directions, charges, and a full list of materials accepted at the CHaRM.

Eco-Cycle insures that these materials are dismantled domestically. Once dismantled, electronic items are separated into their raw materials (such as metals, plastics, etc.) and then shipped for recycling to the greenest, most environmentally-responsible markets we can find. Newer computers (Pentium grade or better) are donated through the Gives Foundation to other non-profits. Since the CHaRM’s opening in November 2001, over 4,300 visitors have used the service to responsibly recycle their e-waste. But it’s not enough to just create good recycling solutions; we’re also going “upstream” to the source of this waste problem ? the electronics industry. Non-profit recyclers, taxpayers and local governments currently bear the cost and burden of managing electronic wastes without support from the manufacturers who created them.

That’s why Eco-Cycle is part of a campaign headed by the GrassRoots Recycling Network and the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition to promote brand owner and producer responsibility for e-waste, holding corporations responsible, legally and financially, for the end-of-life management of their products and packaging, and encouraging manufacturers to design for recyclability using fewer toxins. This isn’t as radical a concept as it sounds. Twenty-eight nations already have some form of producer responsibility or industrial “take back” laws that require businesses to fund end-of-life product management programs. Not surprisingly, the US isn’t one of them. On December 18th, 2002, the European Union passed a landmark electronic directive requiring manufacturers to pay for recycling electronic waste. Under the new rules, the EU hopes to recover up to 75 percent of such goods . The law is due to come into force in September 2005. The directive will impact U.S. electronics makers selling products in Europe, so it will soon beg the question:, if they can do it there, why not here?

Send your eco-questions to marti@ecocycle.org.