EPA’s International Priorities – #6 (E-Waste)
August 24th, 2010 | 
Author: Cleaning Up E-Waste
The electronics that provide us with convenience often end up discarded in developing countries where improper disposal can threaten local people and the environment. EPA recognizes this urgent concern and will work with international partners to address the issues of E-waste. In the near-term, EPA will focus on ways to improve the design, production, handling, reuse, recycling, exporting and disposal of electronics.
Posted in 
Tags: 
GEEP to recycle Philips electronics
DAILY NEWS Aug 16, 2010 1:45 PM
GEEP (Global Electric Electronic Processing) Inc. recently announced that it has been selected by MMD Singapore Pte. Ltd., and all its affiliates (Trademark Licensee of Philips IT Displays) as a partner to provide recycling and collection services for ‘Philips Display Products’ National Take Back Program.
MMD has joined the growing number of manufacturers in providing completely free, responsible recycling services for all Philips Display Products in Canada.
“Our aim at Philips is to inspire everyone to lead a greener life,” says a Philips spokesperson. “This is just one of the green initiatives that are helping people to save our planet.”
GEEP will provide collection services for Philips Display Products at one of its two Canadian processing facilities, either in Edmonton, Alberta or Barrie, Ontario.
GEEP is a fully integrated global service provider, offering a complete solution for the management of used technology and end of life electric, electronic and telecommunications waste.
Twitter/geepmichigan
Article: http://bit.ly/aUQplc
Europe breaking electronic waste export ban
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
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
