Copyright: www.bbc.com
With global e-waste projected to reach 50 million tonnes by next year, it is time to think seriously about electronic recycling practices.
A new article in The Guardian, penned by Lucy Siegle, examines the growing problem of global e-waste, a phenomenon which results in the kind of digital dumping ground she witnessed in Ghana, littered with “charred keyboards and plumes of toxic computer smoke wafting across the landscape.”
In 2011, almost 50 percent of the UK’s e-waste ended up in Ghana and, with 80 percent of our electronics being shipped to emerging and developing countries, in future “Ghana is still likely to be a major destination”, as well as India and Nigeria. China was also an option, and until now was a major recycler of waste from around the world, but this year the country has decided to tighten up its import legislation, “causing more e-waste to be dumped on developing countries to be processed illegally.”
This dumping leads to serious environmental and health problems, with workers exposed to “cadmium, lead, mercury, arsenic and flame retardants”, and land, water and air being contaminated by reprocessing procedures.
Electronic waste, which “is created by the digital revolution, driven by Moore’s law” unfortunately does not have its own law for its recycling, with “options for dealing with e-waste” currently “patchy and imperfect.”
However, there are a number of steps we can all take, to help improve the recycling process.
For example, the recycling of mobile phones in the UK is “comparatively easy”, thanks to various funding schemes, including Envirophone, and the “huge resale market” for discarded mobiles in developing countries.
Siegle also advises that we make sure electronics retailers abide by the WEEE directive, which is “designed to stop people doing the worst thing they can do with electronic waste: chuck it into a landfill.” When you purchase a new electronic gadget from a retailer, they are bound by law to “take in the equivalent old model and dispose of it according to regulation.”
In addition, Siegle prompts us to “stockpile” our e-waste, explaining that by 2020, “at least 85% will have to be recycled” here in the UK which means that “we could reasonably expect an acceleration in innovation.”
With e-waste containing “about 40 to 50 times more precious metals than ores from mining” the article states that “it seems bizarre” that more national recycling is not already being done.
Finally, Siegle advocates a more thoughtful purchasing process, “eking out the lifespan of key gadgets” as a crucial way of cutting down on e-waste, and also describes how some businesses offer their own repair stores and cafes where you can go to learn how to fix your own gadgets, thereby contributing to their longevity.