Majority of people don't know what happens to their old electronic gadgets when they throw them out of their homes. Considering the fact that these waste electronic gadgets contain both the toxic chemicals as well as valuable metals you'd think someone would know this? As a matter of fact, however, the fate of millions of tons of e-waste produced each year is mostly unknown.As the electronic products are becoming cheaper day by day, people generally prefer to replace them instead of fixing them. As a result of this, the amount of old electronics, or e-waste, such as computers, TVs and phones being discarded every year is increasing vastly and in some countries it is the fastest growing type of waste.
With electronic products rapidly becoming a part of throw away culture in several developed countries, the amount of e-waste generated has increased significantly while the solutions have often lagged far behind. Even in the European Union (EU), which has set stricter regulations, about 75% of e-waste is unaccounted for. On an estimate, of the 8.7 million tonnes of e-waste that is generated every year in EU, a vast amount of 6.6 million tonnes of waste is not recycled.
In the United States, there is very little regulation regarding e-waste. Less than 20% of e-waste is collected in the country for recycling. Among these, the recycling percentages for PCs (10 %) and TVs (14 %) are even lower. The impending shift to digital TVs in the US and in other countries will result in a vast increase in the amount of excess analogue TVs.
Even from the 20% of scrap that is collected in the United States, most is exported to the developing nations in Asia and Africa and that is a warning signal.
The vast amount of e-waste that is not recycled can be attributed to -
- Storage: Normally people used to keep their waste electronic products stored in the house for a long time and this leads to the delay these products are ultimately discarded and slims the chances they could be properly recycled.
- Landfill/Incineration: When electronic products are mixed with domestic waste, they are most likely to end up in a landfill or incinerated. Both these methods cause the toxic chemicals present in e-wastes to pollute the environment.
- Reuse and Export: Majority of the old computers and phones are traded to developing nations for reuse and recycling. Most of these are crudely recycled in e-waste scrap yards making widespread pollution.
Technology Divide
Countries like China and India have long been the destinations for dumping of e-waste by unethical traders looking to make quick bucks on e-waste from the western countries. Now even the amount of e-waste generated in these countries is growing fast. In India only 1% of e-waste is recovered for authorized recycling.
Several informal recycling yards have opened up across Asia & Africa that utilize primitive methods to recover valuable metals from scrap. These recycling plants lack in modern technology and use methods that create huge environmental pollution and health risks for the workers.
Even properly ordered and well intent shipments of computers for reprocessing are being ill-treated. According to traders in Ghana, they have to accept junk electronic products in return for a shipping container with a few working computers. The junk products and even the working computers ultimately end up dumped in Ghana, as the country has no infrastructure to recycle toxic e-waste.
Solutions
In my opinion, the problem of e-waste scrap cannot be tackled until the governments, product makers and the consumers all come together to address the issue.
It is the governments' responsibility to make tighter regulations regarding the proper use and disposal of electronic products. It is also the duty of the governments' to prevent the unauthorized export and import of e-waste in their respective countries.
The problem can be significantly reduced if the major electronics companies work to eliminate the harmful toxic chemicals from their products and improve their recycling programs. After generating great demand for their latest mobile phones, sleek laptops and making huge profits from the sale of electronic products, it becomes the moral duty of these electronics companies to take steps to reduce electronic scrap and fight pollution.
To handle the rapidly increasing amounts of e-waste, all manufacturers should offer free and convenient recycling of their goods to all their clients. Where companies are not willing to do this, strict legislation is required to ensure the safe recycling of waste recycling products.
At last, consumers can play their part in e-waste reduction and safe recycling by timely returning their used electronic products to scrap recyclers.
