June 10, 2002	Monday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 28,1423

WHAT is quite well known is that the high-tech revolution has radically changed man’s way of living, thinking and interacting with others. What is much less known is that the trash this revolution generates is posing critical dangers to man’s health and the environment in an incredible manner.

Small wonder, about two-thirds of the electronics waste collected for recycling in the United States is currently being shipped to Pakistan, India and China where it is either reused or recycled but in most cases it is simply dumped into open fields, river banks, ponds, wetlands and ditches which one environmental activist recently described as “underbelly of the high-tech revolution”. The electronics waste, or E-waste, consists of scrap materials from consumer devices, computer monitors, mother boards, key boards, plastic parts, casings, processors, floppy drives, CD drives and circuit boards.

A new study conducted by five environmental organizations and titled “Exporting Harm: The Techno-Trashing of Asia” says that as many as 315 million computers became or will became obsolete from 1997 to 2004. Most of them will be exported to the Third World. The study has been jointly penned by Basel Action Network, Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, Pakistan’s Society for the Conservation and Protection of the Environment (SCOPE), Greenpeace China and Toxics Link India.

Investigations in Pakistan and India reveal that private dealers are importing and processing E-waste in a manner similar to what has been observed in China. Dubai is one of the primary predistribution centres between Europe and South Asia. Another such centre is Singapore. Pakistani businessmen purchase the E-waste from Dubai and forward it to Karachi in sea-going containers. Cost of an average scrap in Dubai is 35-40 rupees per kilo while in Singapore it is Rs 200 per kilo.

At the port, only customs officials handle the E-waste and impose duty on various items according to their value and use. There is no authority present there to question the purpose of import or subsequent use. The hard fact is that only two per cent of the whole bulk can be re-used while the rest is used for extraction of metals and plastics.

Shershah locality in Karachi is one of the principal markets for second-hand and scrap materials in Pakistan where all sorts of used electronics, electricals, spare parts and computers and smuggled goods arrive by sea and land for sale or further distribution to other cities. Sher Shah serves as an open informal market without state controls of any kind. Some of the well-known warehouses for scrap computers are H. Akbar, Quality and Al-Faisal. Countries from where E-waste comes here include the US, Australia, England, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Singapore and the UAE.

Products extracted from the computers include copper, gold, platinum, plastics, lead and glass. While handling these materials, no special equipment or protective clothing of any kind is used. The main parts of the computers are separated by bare hands. The methods by which the metals are extracted are very harmful. The circuit boards are first heated by blow-torch and then the valuable chips are removed for further sale. Flame is directly applied to the board to remove the remaining solder which fetches a price of Rs 120/- per kg. The workers and the general public are hardly aware of the hazards of the materials that are being processed and the toxins they contain. There is no agency to oversee or control the pollution.

In New Delhi, the E-waste trade is a thriving business. The dealers make bids on sea-going containers at the inland depot. The material is taken out, sorted and distributed among various recyclers throughout the country. Very often child labour is employed to separate the parts from the circuit boards.

The electronics industry is the world’s largest and fastest growing manufacturing industry and, as a consequence of this growth, the E-waste is also now growing fast in the industrialized world. In fact, the E-waste is beginning to reach disastrous proportions.

In China, the town of Guiyu, located about an hour’s drive west of Shanton city in Guangdong province, is a booming E-waste processing centre. While rice is still grown in the fields, virtually all of the building space has given way to providing many hundreds of small and often specialized recycling shelters and yards. Along with recycling business has come serious environmental hazards as everyday villagers inhale the dirty air. Many people have developed respiratory and skin problems.

Near Guiyu have appeared ‘graveyards’ where old computers are being buried in large numbers. Villagers make barely enough money to survive by burning electronics wires to recover the scant traces of copper found inside. Many children fish toner out of printer cartridges or swish circuit boards in acid baths in an attempt to remove any precious metals from the worthless cargo.

Most of the E-waste comes from North America, Japan, South Korea and Europe. Chinese press reports put the total labour employed in Guiyu at 100,000 — mostly migrants from other provinces. Many of the workers are women and children. It is virtually impossible to estimate how much E-waste is processed there annually. However, hundreds of trucks are seen moving in and out which makes Guiyu a very significant destination for the world’s E-waste.

An electronic computer is a complicated assembly of more than 1,000 materials, many of which are highly toxic such as chlorinated and brominated substances, toxic gases, toxic metals, photo-active and biologically active materials, acids, plastic additives, etc. Each colour monitor contains an average of 1.8 to 3.6 kilos of lead which can enter the environment when the monitors are illegally disposed of in landfills. Other toxic materials include cadmium, lead oxide, barium and mercury. These are causing pollution in drinking water, waste discharges that harm fish and wildlife, high rates of miscarriages, birth defects and cancer clusters among workers.

In 1999, about 723,000 computer monitors were recycled in the United States and of them 100,000 were exported. There is no systematic reporting of the shipments. But more than a million monitors were unaccounted for and many of them may have gone to parts brokers who subsequently exported them to Third World countries. Proper disposal of a computer in the US normally costs between five to ten dollars, compared to one dollar or less in the Third World countries.

An official of the Basel Action Network (BAN) says: “They call it recycling, but it’s really dumping by another name.” The BAN is an international watchdog group and is trying to enforce the Basel Convention, a 1989 United Nations treaty intended to limit the export of hazardous waste. The United States is the only developed country in the world that has not signed it. The convention calls on countries to reduce exports of hazardous wastes to a minimum.

According to the study, of the total E-waste generated each year about 50 to 80 per cent exported. The export is possible because of cheaper labour, lack of environmental standards in Pakistan, India and China — three major importers — and also because such export is still legal in the United States. China has banned the import of E-waste but the US refuses to honour that ban.

The higher quantity of the waste is being produced in the West because of higher rate of obsolescence. In the past, consumers expected their stereo or TV sets to last for a decade. Today, the rapid revolution of technology has effectively rendered everything disposable. Owners no more take their electronics to repair shops. They prefer to buy new ones which may be cheaper than repair.

In 1998, about 20 million computers became obsolete in the United States and overall E-waste volume was estimated to be 5 to 7 million tons. In Europe, E-waste is growing by 3 to 5 per cent each year. By the year 2005, one computer will become obsolete for every new one put on the market in the West. At present, more than 6,000 computers become obsolete every day in California, 1,600 in Oregon and Washington, etc.

With the exception of Canada and the United States, governments in the West consider E-waste exports illegal without “prior information consent”. It is ironic that a toxicity indicator called TCLP developed by the US is not used by it while allowing E-waste exports on the pretext of various legal exemptions. These exemptions are not based on science but rather on politics and economics.

Thus, by exempting E-wastes from export regulations, the US subjects the rest of the world to severe health risks simply because somebody happens to claim on a bill of lading that the material being exported will be recycled. This is a very dangerous policy. However, currently an international debate is in progress over how to deal with this problem. The European Union wants the manufacturers to accept responsibility for the products, throughout their life, particularly when they contain hazardous materials.