Archive for the ‘Poor Recycling’ Category
Europe breaking electronic waste export ban
August 4th, 2010 | 
Author: 4 August 2010 Last updated at 08:04 ET
By Aidan Lewis BBC News, Rotterdam
Old televisions and computers containing hazardous substances are still being exported from Europe despite a ban aimed at stopping the trade, which poisons workers at makeshift recycling plants in Africa and Asia.
In Rotterdam a Dutch customs officer swings open a heavy metal door to reveal a pile of old televisions stacked tight within a shipping container.
Instead of proceeding to Ivory Coast, these goods will be impounded, checked and most likely sent back to Germany, from where they arrived.
This is the front line of the European effort to stop electronic and electrical equipment, consumed and discarded in ever greater quantities, from being dumped in the developing world.
What is e-waste?
- E-waste includes TVs, telephones, computers, white goods, and everyday household electrical items from toasters to toys
- Circuit boards are prized as scrap, because they contain gold, silver, copper and other elements
- These can only be retrieved safely with specialised recycling procedures
- ‘Backyard recycling’ may expose people to lead and mercury, dioxins from burning plastic, and hazardous leaching agents such as cyanide
The e-waste contains valuable metals, which are extracted at informal recycling sites.
But it also contains toxic heavy metals and hazardous chemicals that are handled by workers, some of them children.
Read Full Article: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-10846395
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California e-waste program a model gone wrong
Posted at 05:52 PM on Sunday, Jul. 18, 2010
hamezcua@sacbee.com – Boxes are filled to the brim with computer monitors and televisions at ECS Refining in Santa Clara. California opted for a government-run e-waste program. Other states have shunned that model.
It seemed a perfect symmetry: California, the world’s high-tech capital, would lead the way in recycling the debris of our digital revolution.
But five years after its launch, the state government-run electronic waste program stands out not as a model of the green innovation for which California is famous but as an example of good intentions gone awry.
By paying more than $320 million to collect and recycle computer monitors and televisions, the state has built a magnet for fraud totaling tens of millions of dollars, including illegal material smuggled in from out of state.
“I don’t think anybody could have forecast the greed that has poisoned the program,” said Bob Erie, chief executive officer of E-World Recyclers north of San Diego and once an enthusiastic supporter of the state effort.
California officials have long been aware of the problems with their approach, too; they met with recycling industry officials two years ago at a private club in Los Angeles to discuss solutions, including whether the state should be in the e-waste business at all.
But nothing has changed. Instead, The Bee found:
– Recyclers and collectors have submitted $23 million in faulty and fraudulent e-waste claims that have been rejected by the state. But state and industry officials estimate that other ineligible claims, totaling as much as $30 million, may have inadvertently been paid.
Read more: http://www.fresnobee.com/2010/07/18/2010112/californias-pioneering-e-waste.html#ixzz0uQ7NuQnb
India’s poor risk ‘slow death’ recycling ‘e-waste’
NEW DELHI (AFP) – Young rag-pickers sifting through rubbish are a common image of India’s chronic poverty, but destitute children face new hazards picking apart old computers as part of the growing “e-waste” industry.
Asif, aged seven, spends his days dismantling electronic equipment in a tiny, dimly-lit unit in east Delhi along with six other boys.
“My work is to pick out these small black boxes,” he said, fingers deftly prising out integrated circuits from the pile of computer remains stacked high beside him.
His older brother Salim, 12, is also hard at work instead of being at school. He is extracting tiny transistors and capacitors from wire boards.
The brothers, who decline to reveal how much they earn a day, say they are kept frantically busy as increasing numbers of computers, printers and other electronic goods are discarded by offices and homes.
Few statistics are known about the informal “e-waste” industry, but a United Nations report launched in February described how mountains of hazardous waste from electronic products are growing exponentially in developing countries.
It said India would have 500 percent more e-waste from old computers in 2020 than in 2007, and 18 times more old mobile phones.
The risks posed to those who handle the cast-offs are clear to T.K. Joshi, head of the Centre for Occupational and Environmental Health at the Maulana Azad Medical College in New Delhi.
He studied 250 people working in the city as recyclers and dismantlers over 12 months to October 2009 and found almost all suffered from breathing problems such as asthma and bronchitis.
“We found dangerously high levels — 10 to 20 times higher than normal — of lead, mercury and chromium in blood and urine samples,” he told AFP.
Full Article: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100706/hl_afp/indiaenvironmentchildrentechnology
E-waste from around the world
E-Waste
March 12th, 2010 Ashish Saklecha
Experts said exposure to toxic chemicals from e-waste – including lead, cadmium, mercury, chromium and polybrominated biphenyls – can damage the brain and nervous system, affect the kidneys and liver, and cause birth defects.
The report was launched in Indonesia’s resort island of Bali. It used data from 11 developing countries to estimate current and future e-waste generation from discarded computers, printers, mobile phones, pagers, cameras, music players, refrigerators, toys, televisions and other items.
China produces an estimated 2.3 million tons of e-waste annually, and though the country has banned e-waste imports, it remains a major dumping ground for waste from developed countries, the report said.
The UN research predicts that in South Africa and China, e-waste from old computers may jump by 200 to 400 per cent from 2007 levels and by 500 per cent in India.
E-waste from mobile phones in the same period is forecast to rise seven times in China, and 18 times in India.
According to the report, over 1 billion mobile phones were sold in 2007 worldwide, up from 896 million in 2006.
The report said most e-waste in China was improperly handled, with much of it incinerated by backyard recyclers to recover valuable metals like gold. Jim Pucket of the Basel Action Network, a non-governmental organization fighting the international trade in toxic wastes, said massive amounts of discarded devices had been exported to China for years.
Full Article Link: http://edutail.com/buzz/e-waste-from-around-the-world/526?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+edutail+%28Indian+Education+Blog%29
Urgent Need to Prepare Developing Countries for Surge in E-Wastes
Rocketing sales of cell phones, gadgets, appliances in China, India, elsewhere forecast
Proper e-waste collection, recycling key to recovering valuable materials, protecting health, building new green economy
Bali, 22 February 2010 – Sales of electronic products in countries like China and India and across continents such as Africa and Latin America are set to rise sharply in the next 10 years.
And, unless action is stepped up to properly collect and recycle materials, many developing countries face the spectre of hazardous e-waste mountains with serious consequences for the environment and public health, according to UN experts in a landmark report released today by UNEP.
Issued at a meeting of Basel Convention and other world chemical authorities prior to UNEP’s Governing Council meeting in Bali, Indonesia, the report, “Recycling – from E-Waste to Resources,” used data from 11 representative developing countries to estimate current and future e-waste generation – which includes old and dilapidated desk and laptop computers, printers, mobile phones, pagers, digital photo and music devices, refrigerators, toys and televisions.
Full Article: http://www.unep.org/Documents.Multilingual/Default.asp?DocumentID=612&ArticleID=6471
