In today's high-tech era, the temptation for upgrades is everywhere: a
slimmer cell phone, a sleeker desktop, a sportier BlackBerry.
But the consequences of the constant quest for better gadgetry are piling up.
Every time last year's monitor is chucked, it becomes a piece of potentially
hazardous waste.
More than three years after federal and industry officials began to talk
about how to cope with the "e-waste" problem, the situation has only
deteriorated. Americans dispose of 2 million tons of electronic products a year
-- including 50 million computers and 130 million cell phones -- and by 2010,
the nation will be discarding 400 million electronic units annually, according
to the International Association of Electronics Recyclers.
Environmentalists say the rising tide of electronic waste is slowly degrading
in landfills and rivers here and abroad, posing a serious threat to water and
air. Computers, televisions and other advanced devices contain neurotoxins and
carcinogens such as lead and beryllium metal that are leaching into waterways
and entering the air through burning or dust.
With little notice, e-waste has become one of the fastest-growing sectors of
the country's solid waste stream, and technology products now account for as
much as 40 percent of the lead in U.S. landfills, according to the Environmental
Protection Agency.
For years, Americans were able to ship discarded computers and televisions to
China, where they were dismantled for scrap. But with an escalating mountain of
electronics waste threatening to overwhelm the country's storage and disposal
capacity, regulators and manufacturers are struggling to devise a comprehensive
solution to one of the nation's newest environmental dilemmas.
"Here we recognize it as a problem, and a number of states do," as well, said
Thomas Dunne, acting assistant administrator for EPA's office of solid waste and
emergency response, who last month ordered his deputies to craft a broad e-waste
recycling strategy. "This is the next extension of pollution prevention."
Still, no one is quite ready to take on the task of managing the high-tech
refuse that U.S. consumers are jettisoning with abandon. Federal regulators have
asked the industry to devise a voluntary system to cope with the problem, but
manufacturers are bickering over how to pay for it. In the meantime, a patchwork
of state regulations has emerged, as officials from Maine to California seek to
impose tougher rules on high-tech producers.
Activists say this haphazard approach to regulation is not enough. They say
it fails to protect Americans from potential danger and encourages recyclers to
ship e-waste to Asia, where it leaches into waterways and affects the health of
low-wage workers. The United States is the only developed country not to have
ratified the Basel Convention, an international treaty that took effect in 1992
and controls the export of hazardous waste.
"There's a real electronics-waste crisis," said Basel Action Network
coordinator Jim Puckett, whose group monitors the global toxic waste trade. "The
U.S. just looks the other way as we use these cheap and dirty dumping
grounds."
Federal officials spent several years working with industry trying to develop
a nationwide plan, but e-waste recycling remains expensive, and manufacturers
are split on whether to eat the costs or pass them on to consumers as a
surcharge with each purchase.
"They came to a consensus about what the system would look like, but they
couldn't come to an agreement on how to pay for it," said Katharine Osdoba, an
EPA staff member who participated in the talks.
Dunne, who recently told a group of recyclers and manufacturers that he sees
himself as "more of a facilitator and less of a regulator," said in an interview
he has no plans to pursue new rules or legislation. Instead, he has asked his
staff to develop a voluntary plan. EPA issued nonbinding guidelines in March on
electronic-waste management, and it has backed pilot programs under which such
retailers as Staples, Office Depot and Good Guys in Australia agree to recycle
electronics at no charge for several weeks at a time.
Staples, which recycled about 210,000 pounds of high-tech trash last year,
now takes back electronics such as cell phones, pagers, toner cartridges and
hand-held devices at any time, no matter where they were purchased. The
company's vice president for environmental affairs, Mark Buckley, said his firm
recognizes this is "a mounting problem, and we want to come up with a creative
solution." But Buckley added that Staples will not be able "to come up with a
total solution" on its own, especially in light of the costs of recycling.
The federal government disposes of 10,000 computers a week, and officials say
they are focused on more incremental steps to deal with their contribution to
the problem. In mid-December EPA awarded eight contracts of about $1 million
each aimed at helping federal agencies dispose of electronic equipment without
hurting the environment. The Dec. 29 release noted "this complex waste stream
poses challenging management issues and potential liability concerns for federal
facilities."
Advocates such as Ted Smith, senior strategist for the Silicon Valley Toxics
Coalition, said federal officials could be doing more to make electronics more
environmentally benign. The European Union has ordered the phaseout of several
toxins from electronic products by the summer of 2006, and by this summer
electronic manufacturers must establish a system of recycling hazardous products
when they become outdated.
California was the first state to adopt comprehensive e-waste rules; as of
Jan. 1 the state's computer and TV retailers must charge a disposal fee of $6 to
$10 to pay for recycling these products once they are no longer useful. Maine
followed with a somewhat similar approach: by the end of the year it will make
producers responsible for taking back and disposing safely of obsolete
electronics.
But most federal officials are reluctant to take on the electronics industry,
Smith said: "We're talking about some very powerful interests who have made it
very clear they don't want to do any more than they're required to."
Some high-tech producers are adopting stricter disposal practices on their
own: Hewlett-Packard Development Co. has pledged not to ship its waste overseas,
and Dell Inc. has agreed not to export old computers, use prison labor to
dismantle them or dump them in landfills. Both Hewlett-Packard and IBM will
recycle any personal computer for a fee of $13 to $34; several recyclers said
dismantling a unit in an environmentally sound manner costs from $4 to $20.
These firms are turning to environmentally sensitive recyclers such as
RetroBox, a Columbus, Ohio, company that has doubled in size each year since it
was founded seven years ago. RetroBox -- headed by a cheerful Harvard Business
School graduate named Stampp Corbin, who sees America's high-tech rejects as a
healthy revenue stream -- assures its customers that it will recycle their old
electronics and then give them 70 percent of his profits, while simultaneously
wiping any confidential business or personal data out of old hard drives.
Corbin, who has 85 employees, expects his profits to double by the end of
2005. Recycling is the only option companies have, he said, "unless we want to
take a small country in the world and make it into an e-waste landfill."