[Part 2 of 2 on waste management.
Today is General Election Day here in the UK. For those of you eligible, make sure you do vote (take your photo ID), and when you do, vote for what you hope, not for what you fear.]
E-waste includes abandoned electronic and electrical items - fridges, televisions, computers, phones, and printers. Their components retain economic value and can therefore be traded. Normally, the parts are dismantled, and the waste is heated to extract metals such as gold, silver, chromium, zinc, lead, tin and copper. Western economies also seek to recycle mobile telephony, batteries from electric vehicles and the like to reduce their dependence on China for valuable rare earths.
Flows of e-waste between countries can help bring economic growth, employment and development to those places where processing is carried out. However, the often dangerous and poorly regulated nature of this work creates health hazards for workers. Critics of the global e-waste trade highlight the injustices it brings to some people and places.
Patterns of e-waste movement
The UN estimated that over 55 million tonnes of e-waste were generated globally in 2022, though tracking reliable data is challenging. According to the United Nations Commodity Trade Statistics database (COMTRADE) the UK is a net exporter of e-waste. In 2020, over 40,000 tonnes of discarded electronics flowed out of the UK. Collectively, Belgium, Spain, Poland, France and Germany take over 95% of UK e-waste exports. In addition, the UK imports e-waste from other countries. Almost all of this comes from just two countries, Ireland (over 70%) and Norway (23%).
E-waste trade
Contrary to popular perception much processing of e-waste takes place in developed countries. Trading e-waste is a lucrative business. A recent UN study found that the value of European e-waste as a source of recycled materials - including copper, steel, aluminium, gold, silver, palladium and rare earths - was around US$200 million higher than the costs of meeting EU environmental rules and laws. In other words, recycling can be carried out in highly regulated EU countries and still generate sizeable profits.
In addition, the size of the gain is determined by the recovery methods used. Highly advanced industrial scale recovery of secondary materials from e-waste requires specialised, large-scale processing infrastructure that is simply unavailable in poorer countries such as Ghana (where e-waste is also recycled but using inefficient, basic and often unsafe methods).
Large TNCs operate advanced recycling facilities:
· Umicore and Nyrstar are companies with multi-billion-dollar annual revenues which run major metal recovery operations in Belgium.
· Poland’s KGHM smelts and refines copper and other metals at its facilities at Głogów and Legnica, with annual outputs of 465,000 tonnes and 110,000 tonnes respectively.
E-waste processing and health
In both developed and developing countries, the health and environmental costs of working with e-waste can be high. Processing, recycling and burying waste can cause health hazards for people working in the waste industry and communities living near disposal sites. Even when e-waste is processed in state-of- the-art facilities, there are still threats to workers and the environment.
· A US study found workers at electronics recycling facilities to have blood lead levels above those believed to be safe.
· Smelters that process recycled e-waste release toxins into the environment. A Canadian facility handling e-waste has been shown to transmit toxic heavy metals into the atmosphere, affecting areas up to 300 km from the processing centre.
· Some of the worst and most widely reported problems have occurred in Ghana, which receives 200,000 tonnes of imported electronic waste a year. In Agbogbloshie, Accra, health problems include damage to the lungs from inhaling fumes of heavy metals such as lead and cadmium. Toxic wastes, heavy metals and battery acids released into the soil and the surface water have destroyed wildlife in the Odaw River which used to be an important fishing ground for local communities.
A further production issue
The tonnage of waste produced by manufacturing processes greatly exceeds the tonnage of electronics later discarded by consumers. For example, in 2020 over 20 million tonnes of hazardous and non-hazardous waste was generated as a byproduct of electronics manufacturing in the EU. The volume of electronics discarded by households was just 3 million tonnes whereas the tonnage of waste generated by manufacturing electronics was over five times larger than that discarded.
Governance of e-waste
Recycling mitigates the environmental impact of manufacturing electronics by conserving materials and energy. However, recycling cannot recoup the waste released during mining or manufacturing of the original product. One policy would be to require manufacturers to substitute safer alternatives for hazardous substances used in the making of goods.
E-waste reductions could also be achieved by applying smarter design principles to the manufacturing of electronics to curb our current ‘throwaway’ mentality. This could involve making changes to the material composition of products so they last longer, can be repaired and can be upgraded, in line with circular economy principles (see previous post on waste management).