Time to tackle Asia’s electrical waste mountain

As the market for electrical and electronic products grows rapidly, the lifespan of products is dropping. Some developed world governments are promoting recycling and starting to require that manufacturers safely dispose products at the end of their working life. However, China and India have yet to address the explosion in ‘e-waste’ – electronic scrap – much of it imported from countries with stricter regulations.

A report from Greenpeace International shows that e-waste recycling in Asia remains largely unregulated and its impact on recycling workers, surrounding communities, water courses and soils is poorly studied. Aside from the volume of scrap, e-waste can contain substantial quantities of hazardous chemicals including lead, cadmium, mercury and brominated and chlorinated flame retardants.  Data collected by Greenpeace in Delhi and the southern Chinese city of Guiyu indicated contamination of the workplace and adjacent environment with a range of toxic metals and persistent organic chemicals.

Many countries do not have the capacity to deal with the quantity of e-waste they generate or with its hazardous chemical constituents. Several are exporting the problem to Asian countries in which legislation to ensure safe and environmentally-sustainable disposal and recycling practices is either lacking or poorly enforced. Products are dismantled, with some materials recovered for re-use and the remainder disposed of, often very crudely, to land or water courses. Dismantling and recycling is typically carried out in unregulated small workshops without adequate worker protection or control over emissions.

Researchers found high levels of chemicals associated with the electronics industry, including antimony, cadmium, copper, lead, mercury and tin. The range of organic contaminants identified in waste and sediment samples reflected their current or historical use in electrical and/or electronic goods, including brominated, chlorinated and phosphorus-based flame retardants and phthalate esters used as additives in plastics and inks. Environmentally persistent chemicals such as polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), chemicals which can build up several thousand-fold in body tissues, were particularly in evidence.

Analysis of workplace dust samples shows that:

• In China, concentrations of lead –found in electrical solders and the glass of cathode ray tubes of TVs and computer monitors – were hundreds of times higher than typical levels recorded for indoor dusts in other parts of the world.
• In one typical workshop in India, cadmium – used in rechargeable batteries and older PVC cables – was present at levels 40,000 times greater than normal
• Brominated and chlorinated flame retardants – subject to increasing controls in developed countries – were found in many of the samples.

The problem is massive. Every year, 20 to 50 million tonnes of e-waste are generated world-wide. China alone discards four million personal computers. Computers built in the early 1980s were used on average for a decade but their lifespan has since reduced to an average of about three years.

Greenpeace calls for:

• further research to identify and quantify the full impact on recycling workers and residents of adjacent communities
• tighter controls on the movement of e-wastes across countries and the manner in which they are recycled
• manufacturers to redesign new electronic goods so that they do not contain hazardous chemicals, in order to make proper dismantling and component separation easier and recycling safer
• global regulations, building on but extending the scope and extent of recent European Union directives on electrical and electronic waste, to ensure that manufacturers design clean products with longer life spans, that are safe and easy to repair, upgrade and recycle, and will not expose workers and the environment to hazardous chemicals.

Source(s):
‘Recycling of Electronic Wastes in China & India: Workplace & Environmental Contamination’, Greenpeace International, by Kevin Brigden, Iryana Labunska, David Santillo and M. Allsopp, August 2005 Full document.
Further background information from Greenpeace Full document.
Photographs of the recycling yards in Guiyu Full document.

Funded by: Greenpeace International

id21 Research Highlight: 28 April 2006

Further Information:
Kevin Brigden, Iryna Labunska, David Santillo and M. Allsopp
Greenpeace Research Laboratories
Department of Biological Sciences
University of Exeter
Exeter EX4 4PS
UK

Tel: +44 (0)1392 263917
Fax: +44 (0)1392 423635  
Contact the contributor: D.Santillo@exeter.ac.uk

Contact the contributor: I.Labunska@exeter.ac.uk

Contact the contributor: K.M.Brigden@exeter.ac.uk

Greenpeace Research Laboratories, UK

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