As I See It: Atop the Monument to Obsolescence

by Victor Rozek

We do not know who she is, but we do know something of her life. She is Chinese. She lives in a village called Guiyu in Guangdong Province. If someone in her family had a car, she could travel to Hong Kong in just four hours. But for her, the distance is galactic. She will never climb the glass and steel peaks of the Hong Kong skyline. Her mountain is made of computer parts: an alp of American electronic refuse that rises in irregular contours above her village.

She sits atop it, aimlessly fingering a keyboard. To her left runs the Lianjiang River. Its waters no longer sustain life; they poison it. To her right, her father, and thousands like him, swings an ancient hammer, dismantling screens, printers, CPUs, looking for the mineral caches within. The broken plastic is tossed into a burning pyre that fills the air with black, acrid smoke thick enough to thwart the sunlight. Through the haze she can see bulldozers pushing mounds of broken components, toner cartridges, and the slurry from chemical extraction processes into the river.

This is what American authorities and computer manufacturers call "recycling." It is perhaps an inevitable, if unintended, consequence of our appetite for computers and related electronic gadgets. Their strategic obsolescence has created a massive disposal problem that grows with each generation of machines. In 1994 an estimated 10 million systems annually found their way into the nation's landfills. Today, that number approaches 40 million.

The problem, known to the affluent and educated, is not only the sheer volume of non-degradable refuse, but the toxic character of the materials used in manufacturing. Cadmium (a known cancer causer), lead, mercury, and an unknown number of synthetic chemicals used in the manufacture of plastics, pose health and environmental hazards.

Over the years, a combination of public concern, elevated consciousness, and the desire for good public relations prompted efforts at salvaging, recycling, and reuse. In the early 1990s, for example, IBM shifted its focus from reducing the manufacturing waste stream to addressing entire product life cycles. One of the early take-back centers in the United States was established in Rochester, Minnesota, where customers could return their AS/400s when they no longer needed them.

Although in 1993 the facility processed only 500 systems, a full 98 percent of the parts were either reconditioned and used as new, installed by field personnel as replacement parts, or recycled. The system itself was designed for easier disassembly and separation into component or material types. Each part was labeled, identifying it as reusable or recyclable. Even the packaging was replaced with unbleached fiberboard. The only AS/400 parts relegated to the dumpster were tape cartridges containing the operating system and the small plastic labels used to identify various components.

Still, an enormous number of systems were being dumped in local landfills. California and Massachusetts, states with large populations and concentrations of high-tech industries, became concerned about ground water and soil contamination. They passed laws preventing the wholesale dumping of computers and electronic components. At least 20 other states are poised to follow. In response, a number of computer recycling companies emerged to process the astonishing quantities of e-waste.

Everyone felt better, but few actually understood the workings of the "recycling" operation or had anything but a theoretical grasp of the unmanageable volume of materials that continued flooding into the pipeline. The reality was that 50 to 80 percent of the electronic equipment was never recycled at all, but loaded onto ships destined to be dumped in some desperately poor nation. Officials in target nations like China, India, and Pakistan either didn't fully comprehend the toxic nature of the materials they were accepting or, more likely, were paid not to object.

There ought to be a law, you say? Well there is. It's called the Basel Convention, a United Nations environmental treaty that prohibits the haves from dumping their hazardous waste on the have-nots. The United States, however, is the only developed nation that refused to sign it. In that, we have the distinction of being aligned with Afghanistan and Haiti, which apparently also wish to preserve their right to export toxic waste, even though they produce none.

Officially, the rejection of the Basel Convention was, in part, justified by the clutter of existing laws that govern the export of toxic materials. Those laws, however, also proved to be ineffectual in keeping cargos of e-waste in their home ports, because the government exempted electronic components from export restrictions. E-waste was not, officials argued, headed for disposal; it was headed for recycling.

As solutions go, this one had something for everyone. Consumers got the illusion of responsible disposal, the recycling companies could dump whatever they didn't want or were unable to process, and the manufacturers were exempt from the obligation of reclaiming their unwanted products. Once the discarded equipment left our shores, everyone was content to see the problem disappear. And no one--not the government, not the recycling companies, and not the manufacturers--had ever bothered to visit these foreign e-waste destinations. No one, that is, until the Basel Action Network and the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition decided to take a look.

Jim Puckett of the Basel Action Network was among the delegation that visited China. He found what he calls "a cyberage nightmare." Four different villages and perhaps 100,000 people, including women and children, are involved in the salvage and disposal operation, he told me. They attack 21st century toxic waste with 19th century tools and no occupational health and safety precautions. Their average pay is $1.50 per day.

All day long, trucks deliver loads of computer parts to Guiyu. They are piled in what resembles a miniature mountain range, swarmed by people who break the equipment apart by hand and sort it into sellable components. Aluminum, steel, copper, and some plastics are valued. Tons of unwanted plastic are either burned, releasing PCBs and dioxins, or dumped directly into the river.

In another village, hundreds of women labor over small braziers, melting the solder on circuit boards, attempting to salvage bits of gold. The work requires intense concentration, and hour after hour the women bend over the grills, inhaling lead fumes and isocyanates. Nitric and hydrochloric acid is used to separate the gold, and the venomous mixture is also dumped in the river.

So much plastic and so many bits of wire are burned that everything and everyone are covered with ash. Children, Puckett says, play on the ash mounds. Tests show that the lead content in river sediments and soils is 2000 percent higher than what is considered safe. The villagers say their well water tastes so bad that they must now purchase water from 30 kilometers away.

It isn't the solution we had all hoped for.

But the trend isn't entirely bleak. If the human condition is a race between consciousness and disaster, then consciousness is making slow gains. And we need not be wholly discouraged that the gains often require legislative assistance or the investigative efforts of public interest groups.

The concept of requiring manufacturers to "take back" their obsolete products got a jump start in Europe. Germany initiated an ambitious cross-industry program in 1991, which was successful in reducing waste by 1 million tons in just its first two years of operation. Making manufacturers responsible for disposal and detoxification of their products has brought a new level of scrutiny to the entire product cycle--from the choice of construction materials to the product design to the amount and type of packaging.

U.S. corporations wishing to do business in Germany were obliged to participate in the program, and thus Apple, for example, conducts a successful take-back program in Germany, but not in the U.S., presumably because it is not yet obliged to. Likewise, Sony operates a no-fee take-back program for computer monitors in Germany but only offers a limited-fee-based program in parts of the United States.

IBM has offered no-charge take-back programs in certain European countries since 1989. In the United States, however, it charges $29.99 to recycle computer equipment. For two bucks less, United Recycling Industries will send you a pre-paid shipping label that you can affix to your boxed system and drop off at any UPS pick-up location. Its destination is ostensibly an Illinois recycling facility, but, based on the research of the Basel Action Network and the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, who knows where it will end up.

Other companies have adopted take-back, not because they were coerced, but because they perceived a unique opportunity. Dell operates take-back programs in 30 countries, accepts equipment regardless of brand, refurbishes it when possible, and resells it in secondary markets. Hewlett-Packard has a fee-based, pompous-sounding program, called Planet Partners, but it includes pickup of obsolete equipment. Additionally, HP will donate functional products to charitable organizations.

So some good work is being done. Manufacturers are becoming more attentive to the long-term impact of their products, and more accountable for their disposal. Ultimately, for legitimate wide-scale recycling to succeed, computer manufacturers will have to resolve an inherent contradiction. On the one hand, no manufacturer wants to voluntarily take full responsibility for its products, because, they claim, it will put them at a competitive disadvantage. Producers agree that it will take legislation to compel the industry to be accountable. But on the other hand, industry vehemently fights against any and all government regulations.

Legislation, however, is having a positive impact. In Japan and Europe, some of the more toxic substances used in electronics manufacturing have been banned altogether. As a consequence, several Japanese companies now produce computer equipment without lead or brominated flame retardants.

Eliminating the need for costly and time-consuming detoxification not only has obvious environmental and health advantages, but will relieve some of the pressure of unmanageable volumes suffered by recyclers, perhaps allowing them to become more than glorified waste distribution centers.

As for the little girl in Guiyu, who can say? Perhaps someday her daughter may be seen playing in a meadow full of flowers near a river that runs clear.