Point/Counterpoint from chapter 14. Take a stand. Do you
agree or disagree? Write a minimum of one paragraph for each
one.
Chapter 14
Exporting E-waste: A Fair Solution?
Point
Yes Exporting is always and everywhere a win-win situation:
The more companies and countries export, the more they improve
market efficiency. Exporting enables companies to increase sales,
improve productivity, and diversify activities. Likewise, exporting
helps countries generate jobs, accelerate innovation, and improve
living standards. In broader terms, it promotes connections among
countries that improve foreign relations and stabilize
international affairs. Despite these virtues, some contend there is
a dark side of exporting, namely the trade of hazardous waste in
the form of obsolete tech equipment. E-waste—trash composed of
computers, monitors, electronics, game consoles, hard drives,
television, smartphones, and other items—inexorably increases as
the Information Age rolls on. In 2006, nearly 66 million used
electronic components were collected for reuse or recycling in the
United States; most were exported. By 2016, e-waste was pushing
several hundred million pieces, representing more than 4 million
tons.58 Ongoing trends crank out newer, cooler, faster, smaller,
fancier devices that, in replacing their predecessors and then
eventually being replaced themselves, will increase e-waste nearly
500 percent over the next decade. Where Should E-waste Go? Where to
put all this e-trash is a tough question. Many countries and
municipalities in the United States, for example, ban outright
dumping of e-waste in local landfills. This legislation means that
disposing of e-waste products, when possible, in any given
industrialized country costs from $2,500 to $4,000 a ton. In
contrast, untreated waste can be sold to countries in Africa and
Asia—where it will be recycled, reused, or dumped—for reportedly as
little as $50 a ton.59 Low costs are a result of cheap labor,
different environmental regulations, and growing processing
capacity. Plus, the absence of public opposition reduces processing
expenses and desperate folks seeking work dampens public
objections. As might be expected, major e-waste shipping routes
show that the industrial nations export the bulk of their e-waste
to developing countries, notably China, Malaysia, India, Mexico,
Nigeria, and Bangladesh (see Map 14.1).60 Benefits for All
Exporting e-waste to recycling centers throughout the world is an
efficient solution to an escalating problem. First and foremost,
recycling sustains our resources and helps us protect the
environment. In developing countries, industries have sprung up to
recycle old computers, monitors, circuit boards, scanners,
printers, routers, cell phones, and network cards. While
rudimentary, these industries create jobs in places where jobs are
hard to find and difficult to sustain. To their credit, developing
countries have converted their superior location economics into
vital jobs, income, and markets. There are more than 6,000
businesses employing 100,000 workers at ground zero of the e-waste
trade: Guiyu, China. Previously subsistence farmers and fishermen,
they now process an endless stream of truckloads of e-waste that
arrive daily.61 Mexico has similar spots, many waiting for the
18-wheelers full of spent batteries from cars, phones, computer,
solar appliances, and tools that cross the U.S.–Mexican border each
day. Again, the locals benefit. Despite the dangerous, dirty work
of recycling spent batteries, people living near the Acumuladores
de Jalisco plant find opportunity. As the wife of one worker said,
“There are not many other jobs around here.”62 Similarly, exporting
e-waste helps entrepreneurs in developing countries create value by
recovering, recycling, and reusing scarce resources. Copper, a
valuable commodity, can represent nearly 20 percent of a mobile
phone’s total weight. Rising commodity prices have made these
activities quite profitable. Atul Maheshwar, owner of a recycling
depot in India, says of U.S. exports, “If your country keeps
sending us the material, our business will be good.”63 In addition,
some of the equipment shipped to Asia helps improve the local
standard of living. Graham Wollaston of Scrap Computers, a recycler
in Phoenix, claims that virtually every component of old electronic
devices is reusable. Old televisions turn into fish tanks in
Malaysia, while silicon shortage creates demand for old monitors
elsewhere. “There’s no such thing as a third-world landfill,” Mr.
Wollaston explains. “If you were to put an old computer on the
street, it would be taken apart for the parts.”64 Similarly, Luc
Lateille of the Canadian firm BMP Recycling says, “We don’t send
junk—we only send the materials that they are looking for.”65
Exporting hazardous waste also helps MNEs improve their social
responsibility. Samsung, Mitsubishi, and Nokia, among others,
increasingly take a cradle-to-grave responsibility for their
products. The eCycling Leadership Initiative, launched in 2010,
commits makers of consumer electronics to recycle a billion pounds
of e-waste responsibly by 2016; in 2011, members spent more than
$100 million to recycle about 500 million pounds of old
electronics. Elsewhere, state regulation spurs laggards to support
green recycling. Since 2004, more than 20 U.S. states have required
manufacturers to recycle used electronics. Like-minded laws are on
deck in other states. Companies often comply by exporting their
e-waste to countries that have an interest in recycling and the
infrastructure to do it. A Tough Solution Certainly, callous
companies dump useless, toxic e-waste around the world. And, yes,
some of it pollutes landfills, poisons waterways, and fouls the
air. Overall, though, exporting e-waste works for citizens,
consumers, companies, and countries. Ultimately, nations really
don’t have a choice. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, for
example, concedes inappropriate practices have occurred in the
recycling of e-waste, but suggests stopping its export is not truly
practical. Likewise, poor nations really have no choice; they must
generate income some way or condemn themselves to poverty.
Counterpoint
no In theory, recycling is beneficial and exporting e-waste
does improve efficiency. Still, recycling your e-waste does not
always mean you’re doing the right thing. Explained the director of
the Basel Action Network, “The dirty little secret is that when you
take [your electronic waste] to a recycler, instead of throwing it
in a trashcan, about 80 percent of that material, very quickly,
finds itself on a container ship going to a country like China,
Nigeria, India, Vietnam, Pakistan— where very dirty things happen
to it.”66 Added the chief executive of RSR, a Dallas-based lead
recycler that operates solely in the United States, “We’re shipping
hazardous waste to a neighbor ill-equipped to process it, and we’re
doing it legally, turning our heads, and pretending it’s not a
problem.”67 Growing exports of hazardous waste encourage dangerous
recycling industries in many developing countries. Going forward,
exports will accelerate as e-waste increases far faster than other
sorts of rubbish. Collectively, the tsunami of e-trash imposes far
more costs than the pittance that recycling it generates. A Witch’s
Brew Most developing countries lack the regulatory codes or
disposal infrastructure to safeguard against such dangers. Locals
often use crude methods that, besides being illegal in the United
States, expose workers and residents to a witch’s brew of toxins.
For example, some e-waste contains trace amounts of precious metals
like copper and silver. Extracting them encourages cash-strapped,
loosely regulated recyclers to use unsafe, antiquated open-air
incineration methods. Burning electronic parts to separate copper,
solder, or other metals from plastic coatings releases dioxins and
other hazardous chemicals. Indeed, snagging that sliver of silver
unleashes a mixture of more than a thousand chemicals, including
toxic metals (e.g., lead, barium, and mercury), flame-retardants,
cadmium, acids, plastics, and chlorinated and brominated compounds.
Local air quality suffers as “circuit boards are burned after acid
washing, spewing deadly smoke and exposing workers and people
living around these facilities.”68 Once local scrap shops finish
disassembling equipment, the trash goes into public landfills, the
acid runoff flows into groundwater, and the noxious fumes follow
air currents—all mercilessly contaminating the environment. Casual
Inhumanity Madhumita Dutta of Toxics-Link Delhi argues that these
problems are less disturbing than the “appalling” working
conditions in recycling facilities: “Everything from dismantling
the computer to pulling out parts of the circuit boards to
acid-washing boards to recover copper is done with bare hands
without any protective gear or face protection.” Rare is the
worksite that uses proper disposal practices. Workers and society,
to say nothing of environmental sustainability, suffer. What, then,
of the premise of charity—that is, sending computer equipment from
countries where it has little use to countries where it can make a
difference? Critics shred this straw man, asserting that wealthier
countries and powerful companies conveniently donate obsolete
equipment to dodge high recycling expenses. “Too often,
justifications of ‘building bridges over the digital divide’ are
used as excuses to obscure and ignore the fact that these bridges
double as toxic waste pipelines,” said one critic.69 Moreover, most
of the computer equipment sent is worthless trash—waste that can be
neither repaired nor resold.70 Institutional Gaps Some argue that
manufacturers need to step up and take full responsibility for the
hazardous materials they used to build products that had earned
them profits.71 Companies have moved in this direction, sponsoring
green campaigns to recycle e-waste. Substantive progress has been
slow, however. Environmentalists recommend that countries set
tougher standards to monitor, control, and certify cross-border
shipments of e-waste. That has proven disappointing. Inspections of
e-waste cargo headed from European seaports to developing
countries, for example, found that nearly half was illegal.72 Then
again, presumed solutions can lead to unintended problems. The fact
that many U.S. states require companies to take responsibility for
recycling electronic equipment has curtailed the export of e-waste
to developing countries—but only of the more valuable components.
Processors cherry-pick parts that can be refurbished for reuse. The
remainder is disassembled, with urban miners targeting silver,
gold, and palladium. The final batch of trash, the worst of the
worst, has no reuse market and is shipped to developing countries
for disposal.73 Who to Turn To? Others endorse stronger enforcement
of the Basel Convention on the Transboundary Movement of Hazardous
Wastes and their Disposal, a United Nations treaty that regulates
the generation, management, movements, and disposal of hazardous
waste. It proposes aggressive measures, including an international
ban on the export of all toxic waste, no matter whether for
recovery, recycling, reuse, or final disposal. As of 2015, 182
states and the European Union are parties to the Convention. Haiti
and the United States have signed the Convention but not ratified
it.74