Green Tech

WASHINGTON--Electronic waste is still being exported to other nations, a move that has negative environmental consequences and may run afoul of federal law, government auditors told Congress on Wednesday.

Environmental Protection Agency regulations over e-waste exports are very limited, according to a new report (PDF) from the Government Accountability Office, and the existing regulations are not well-enforced.

E-waste is "a low priority for EPA," John Stephenson, director of natural resources and environment for the GAO, told politicians on Wednesday at a hearing of the House Foreign Affairs' subcommittee on Asia, the Pacific, and the Global Environment.

A child in Guiyu, China where a high volume of electronic waste is processed. Click the photo for a gallery on e-waste in China.

(Credit: Greenpeace)

The EPA's e-waste regulations cover only old cathode ray tube (CRT) televisions and monitors. Meanwhile, other exported used electronics, such as computers, printers, and cell phones, "flow virtually unrestricted" into other countries, the report said. A substantial amount of exported e-waste ends up in countries like China and India, where it is improperly handled, potentially exposing people to toxins like lead, if the material is disposed of improperly.

Not only are the EPA rules narrow, but they apparently are poorly enforced and easily circumvented. The rules covering CRTs went into effect in January 2007, and since then, only one company has been fined for violating them. However, by posing as foreign CRT buyers, the GAO says it found 43 U.S. companies readily willing to ignore the regulations.

"The EPA told us there were no plans for an enforcement strategy," Stephenson said.

Subcommittee Chairman Rep. Eni Faleomavaega, a Democrat from American Samoa, said, "These companies essentially trick consumers into thinking they are doing the right thing by recycling their electronics."

Faleomavaega claimed that the impending switch to digital-television broadcasting, scheduled for February 2009, could render millions of CRT televisions obsolete. (In reality, the DTV converter box works fine with analog televisions. Another option is for a broadcast TV viewer to sign up to receive cable or satellite TV on their old-fashioned CRTs.)

While it's true that some materials used in manufacturing can be health hazards, the volume of e-waste is relatively small. EPA data show that it represents less than a 10,000th of the more than 30 million tons of solid waste produced by the United States each day.

In addition, the EPA has sometimes been overly pessimistic. One 2003 study performed by researchers Timothy Townsend and Yong-Chul Jang of the University of Florida tested soil from 11 actual landfills that included color TVs, monitors, and circuit boards. They found that concentrations of lead that were less than 1 percent of that which the EPA's computer models had predicted.

Some politicians argued that exporting toxic e-waste to other countries--including CRT screens, which have a few pounds of lead used for shielding in each--will result in dangerous amounts of lead ending up in children's toys.

"They are getting the raw material from someplace," Stephenson said. (In reality, the Chinese also mine it. A report on ChinaMining.org says one company alone--not even the largest lead-mining outfit--will produce between 54,300 tons and 70,000 tons of lead this year.)

The GAO made three recommendations to mitigate the problem of exporting hazardous e-waste: the EPA should expand its definition of "hazardous" materials so it encompasses products that pose risk upon disassembly; the U.S. should improve its identification and tracking of imports to identify used electronics; and Congress should implement legislation to ratify the Basel Convention.

Stephenson said the first step is to "make it easier for recyclers to do the right thing, and make it competitive with illicit recyclers taking things overseas."

There is significant economic incentive for recycling companies to export hazardous e-waste because the need for raw materials in countries like China is driving up the demand for used electronics.

Rep. Diane Watson, D-Ca., also said, "The U.S. fails to hold manufacturers responsible for the end-of-life management of their products that contain toxic materials."

Not all companies are at fault, said Rep. Donald Manzullo, R-Ill., pointing out that Dell and Hewlett-Packard have programs to safely refurbish and recycle e-waste.

Some relief from the e-waste problem has also come from the United States, said Stephenson, noting that 17 states have landfill bans on e-waste.

Yet the fact remains, Stephenson said, that "we have a serious problem." Americans dispose of more than 300 million computers and electronics annually, "and this number is growing exponentially," Stephenson said.

"Nobody knows what to do with these," he added. "I have three used computers in my basement, and now I'm afraid to give them to a recycler."

CNET's Declan McCullagh contributed to this report.

A child in Guiyu, China where a high volume of electronic waste is processed.

(Credit: Greenpeace)

A new study highlights the toll that electronic waste is taking on the people and places where large-scale recycling is done.

The scientific journal Environmental Science and Technology published results of a study that measured the level of heavy metals in Guiyu, China, a village heavily involved in processing discarded electronic products like PCs.

Researchers measured the levels of heavy metals that are released by people using "crude" processing techniques of electronic circuit boards.

From the summary:

Levels at the schoolyard and food market showed that public places were adversely impacted. Risk assessment predicted that Pb (lead) and Cu (copper) originating from circuit board recycling have the potential to pose serious health risks to workers and local residents of Guiyu, especially children, and warrants an urgent investigation into heavy metal related health impacts. The potential environmental and human health consequences due to uncontrolled e-waste recycling in Guiyu serves as a case study for other countries involved in similar crude recycling activities.

The New York Times expands on the findings a bit in this story: "Recycling That Harms the Environment and People."

For a more graphic look at how e-waste is adversely affecting people and environments in China and Africa, I suggest this National Geographic feature, "High-Tech Trash," which ran earlier this year.

Seeing the photos of workers burning cables and circuit boards, releasing neurotoxins, is a frightening sight. The National Geographic article finishes with the conclusion that exporting electronic waste to developing countries like China results in contaminated products exported back to richer countries.

Ultimately, shipping e-waste overseas may be no bargain even for the developed world. In 2006, Jeffrey Weidenhamer, a chemist at Ashland University in Ohio, bought some cheap, Chinese-made jewelry at a local dollar store for his class to analyze. That the jewelry contained high amounts of lead was distressing, but hardly a surprise; Chinese-made leaded jewelry is all too commonly marketed in the U.S. More revealing were the amounts of copper and tin alloyed with the lead.

"The U.S. right now is shipping large quantities of leaded materials to China, and China is the world's major manufacturing center," Weidenhamer says. "It's not all that surprising things are coming full circle and now we're getting contaminated products back." In a global economy, out of sight will not stay out of mind for long.

For some photos from Guiyu, see this CNET News.com gallery from 2005: "Photos: E-waste in a Chinese scrapyard." That Chinese village is not alone, however; see also "Photos: E-waste piles up in Nigeria," and other previous coverage on the subject.

Three of the biggest makers of TVs have formed a company to help manage the wave of electronics waste set to swell with the onset of digital television. Panasonic, Sharp, and Toshiba have launched the Manufacturers Recycling Management Co. in Minnesota.

That state last year enacted a law making vendors responsible for their brands' discarded electronics. MRM contracts with third-party recyclers including CRT Processing and Materials Processing Corporation, which specialize in handling tired monitors and televisions.

Old televisions and monitors are laced with lead, cadmium, and toxic flame retardants, but careful recycling can recover valuable and reusable metals and plastics.

Since September, MRM has collected some 750 tons of TVs, PCs, audio equipment, fax machines, and other gear through events such as Plug-In to eCycling programs managed by the EPA and more than 20 tech vendors and stores.

MRM has recycling agreements with vendors including Hitachi, JVC, Mitsubishi, Philips, and Pioneer. The company, which currently has just one employee, plans to make money through fees from manufacturers seeking help to cope legally with cast-off electronics.

MRM is set to expand within the next year in Connecticut, North Carolina, Oregon, Texas, and Washington states, and possibly in other states in coming years.

Some 35 states are mulling individual e-waste recycling laws, to the dismay of much of the electronics industry. The Consumer Electronics Association has campaigned for national laws to replace the state-by-state patchwork of regulations. That group runs the Consumer Electronics Show being held this week in Las Vegas, where news of MRM's launch was announced.

"We do desire a federal program and will continue to work toward that," said Christopher Loncto, a spokesman for Sharp.

New rules in Minnesota, for one, appear to be driving up recycling rates there. At the Mall of America in November, for instance, organizers concerned about the danger of traffic jams canceled an e-waste recycling drive that drew overwhelming crowds.

As big brand names try to manage the growing tide of e-waste, small-time entrepreneurs also hope to profit by giving new life to old gadgets. New Web-based companies such as BuyMyTronics and Second Rotation offer to buy people's old iPods and mobile phones.