Waste Managment

Introduction

E-waste or Waste from Electronic and Electrical Equipment (WEEE) is no longer a subject for academic discussions at environmental forums. Instead, there is a growing realization that the issue may assume dangerous proportions over the next few years if it continues to be left unaddressed. Disturbingly, the communities that are affected by the toxics in e-waste need not necessarily be those that are creating the waste. The large-scale unethical export of e-waste by industrialized nations to developing countries such as India, China and Pakistan is shifting the onus of development to communities that are ill-equipped to deal with such waste. In absence of stricter waste management regulations in developed countries, the lesser developed become the dump yard of the goods discarded by the former.

The subject has also attained the focus of the International Community, though more in principle as in 1992 the World Community formulated the Basel Convention on Transboundary movement of Hazardous wastes. The paper is an endeavour to throw light upon the grey shades of the Technological development and seeks to assimilate all the relevant information on the subject.

What is E-waste?

The expression E-waste is an all inclusive category which means all discarded or obsolete electronic products emerging as a result of the rapid development in the field of electronics. It includes obsolete Computers, Mobile Phones, Refrigerators, Air Conditioners, Washing Machines and all similar products. A major contribution to the garbage is from the IT sector and the imports of cheaper obsolete junk form developed countries like USA and Canada.

Immoral Export of Pollution

Industrialized countries produce nearly 80% of the 400 million tones generated annually in the world, and they export 10% of that proportion, for the most part to underdeveloped countries in dire economic straits. Exporting this waste to less developed countries has been one way in which the industrialized world has avoided having to deal with the problem of expensive disposal and close public scrutiny at home. For years, Latin America -and in particular southern countries like Paraguay or Argentina- was used by industrialized countries as a garbage dump. Countries like India and China are the recent junkyards for the disposal of the hazardous Electronic waste.

E-Waste:  Recycle OR Dispose

At macro-level, there are two ways to handle the E-Wastes: Dispose or Recycle/Refurbish.

Disposal

Parts of, Microprocessor, Computer chip, monitor, circuit board, molded plastics make-up that gleam, attractive i-mac/think pad/ PC. At atomic level, the array of chemical constituents that make-up the computers are the trail of: lead & cadmium, barium, PCBs etc; De-facto horror is, they all release highly toxic dioxins & furans under unfavorable conditions. Land filling is the state-of-art to manage with e-wastes and Landfill in real sense, is a PPB (Poisonous Pandora's Box). Landfills - underground facility, where all the x,y,z wastes produced on planet are dumped and sealing it up in an engineered way, that it doesn’t seep through air or ground. It's just like: collecting all the bloodiest-poisonest-devilish anacondas from Amazon and seal it up in an 'engineered' hood. It's easier to visualize the consequence if any delicate damage happens to the seal. There are hundreds of 'abandoned' landfills, upon which now the slender-tall buildings crops up, due to the real-estate boom. The under-ground scenario is, permeation of leached wastes contaminates the ground water. Now, the e-fact is, consumer electronics constitute 40 percent of the lead found in landfills. This lead is treacherous that even if we burn, stomp, or bury it - it will sustain its life cycle.

Recycling

Specialized electronic recyclers strip-off essential re-usable components and incinerate the left-overs in smelters. However, the end product is a metal stream that is worth money based on the composition of the metals. It's got a lot of steel, aluminum and copper. The scrapped chunks could be re-used, but it’s the least preferred, since the "cost" of recycling -- is not free, either the Producer should inflate the cost of greener- product or the Govt. should provide subsidiaries for it. That's not a commercial equation which could be marketed since it’s not a producer's responsibility to give ultra-green products at a marketable cost. Added to that, due to regulations and pollution laws, it's often cheaper to export the scrap to [Third world/needy] countries where such laws, if they exist at all, are more lax than those in Canada and the United States. There are a lot of countries that make a huge business in the processing, recycling, smelting and disassembly of electronics, and pathetically it is done in an environmentally unfriendly manner.

HEALTH HAZARDS OF E-WASTES

The health impacts of the mixtures and material combinations in the products often are not known. The production of semiconductors, printed circuit boards, disk drives and monitors uses particularly hazardous chemicals, and workers involved in chip manufacturing are now beginning to come forward and reporting cancer clusters. In addition, new evidence is emerging that computer recyclers have high levels of dangerous chemicals in their blood. Health impact of some of the to some e-toxics found in computers

Lead

Lead can cause damage to the central and peripheral nervous systems, blood system and kidneys in humans. Effects on the endocrine system have also been observed and its serious negative effects on children’s brain development has been well documented. Lead accumulates in the environment and has high acute and chronic toxic effects on plants, animals and microorganisms.[1]

 Cadmium
            Cadmium compounds are classified as toxic with a possible risk of irreversible effects on human health. Cadmium and cadmium compounds accumulate in the human body, in particular in kidneys. Cadmium is adsorbed through respiration but is also taken up with food. Due to the long half-life (30 years), cadmium can easily be accumulated in amounts that cause symptoms of poisoning. Cadmium shows a danger of cumulative effects in the environment due to its acute and chronic toxicity.[2]

Mercury
            When inorganic mercury spreads out in the water, it is transformed to methylated mercury in the bottom sediments. Methylated mercury easily accumulates in living organisms and concentrates through the food chain particularly via fish. Methylated mercury causes chronic damage to the brain.

In the slum neighbourhood of Seelampur, a doctor presses his stethoscope to the chest of a skinny, middle-aged labourer. He says the man has shown ‘‘classic’’ problems — bleeding from the throat and breathlessness. The number of such patients at his clinic has grown rapidly, it’s because of the burning wires.’’

The wires are part of a toxic tide of computer waste in communities like Seelampur, where it is picked clean for useful minerals or reusable parts and then discarded. Doctors say such work is blackening the lungs of the poor.

A recent study by the Chittaranjan National Cancer Institute, Kolkata, found that people in Delhi are about twice as likely to suffer from lung ailments as those in the countryside. While traffic pollution is the main cause, doctors say the smelting electronic parts at factories on the city’s edges should not be discounted.

THE BASEL CONVENTION

In 1989 the world community established the Basel Convention on the Transboundary Movement of Hazardous Waste for Final Disposal to stop the industrialized nations of the OECD from dumping their waste on less developed countries. Wastes are substances or objects which are disposed of or are intended to be disposed of or are required to be disposed of by the provisions of national law 5 May 1992. The Basel Convention is the first and foremost global legal instrument regulating the trans-boundary movement of hazardous wastes and their disposal. Currently 165 states and the European Community are Parties to the Convention.

Objectives of the Basel Convention

The convention focuses on Environmentally Sound Management i.e. “Taking all practicable steps to ensure that hazardous wastes or other wastes are managed in a manner which will protect human health and the environment against the adverse effects which may result from such wastes”

ESM includes minimizing the generation of such wastes; reducing transboundary movements, improving treatment and disposal, and ensuring such wastes are handled as close as possible to where they were generated.

In 1994 parties to the Basel Convention, now over 60 countries, agreed to an immediate ban on exports of hazardous waste destined for final disposal in non-OECD countries. Seventy-seven non-OECD countries, and China, pushed heavily for a ban on the shipping of waste for recycling. As a result, the Basel Ban was adopted, promising an end to the export of hazardous waste from rich OECD countries to poor non-OECD countries for recovery operations by December 31st 1997.

The USA has declined to participate and has lobbied Governments in Asia to establish bilateral trade agreements to continue dumping their hazardous waste after the Basel Ban came into effect on January 1st 1998. The amount of computer scrap exported from the USA will continue to grow as product obsolescence increases.

Some relevant excerpts from the treaty are: -

·         ANNEX VIII wastes - hazardous

A1180: “Waste electrical and electronic assemblies or scrap containing components such as accumulators and other batteries … mercury switches, glass from cathode ray tubes and other activated glass and PCB-capacitors, or contaminated with Annex I constituents (eg cadmium, mercury, lead, PCBs) "

·         ANNEX IX wastes - covered by the Convention if they contain Annex I constituents and exhibit Annex III hazardous characteristics

B1110: "Electrical and electronic assemblies (including printed circuit boards, electronic components and wires) destined for reuse  ...”

The other side of the Coin

But in truth, halting the trade in waste between industrialized and developing countries will do more harm to people. Indeed, the Basel convention was never even necessary. It was a response by the international community to a few misrepresented claims of exports of hazardous waste to developing countries, against which laws already existed. The treaty was agreed upon in 1989 and came into force in 1992. Subsequently, 62 parties approved the Basel Ban Amendment -- not yet in force -- which prohibits the trade in hazardous waste between industrialized and developing countries. In this way, the Basel treaty illustrates an evolving conflict where trade sanctions are used to enforce Western labor and environment standards, undermining the move toward transparent, non-discriminatory rules through the World Trade Organization.

The real effect of the Basel ban may be to slow down development in poor countries. By driving the waste trade underground, it will harm the livelihood of the poor. In India, lead metal recycling already has been driven underground -- increasing the costs of enforcing existing regulations and slowing the improvement of health and safety standards.

To become law, the Basel ban requires only 42 ratifications -- less than 30% of the number of parties to the treaty. Expect to see political maneuverings that undermine the accepted practices of multilateral forums. With environmental treaties, it is common that aid-dependent nations such as those in Africa become pawns in the game, enticed with money to sign and ratify treaties. Along with the EU, countries like Rwanda often are among the first to sign and ratify such treaties.

Furthermore, the ban illustrates the disproportionate influence that non-governmental and industry organizations wield over treaties, allowing them to significantly affect the economies of developing countries. These groups have little accountability either to governments or the people for whom they claim to speak. Captured by these vested interests, the Basel ban's proponents distract attention from a broader agenda of promoting better labor and environmental conditions. They assume a moral high ground on environment and health. Measures enacted under this ban will have significant and adverse effects on people and the environment in many poor countries, prolonging the poverty of those who desperately need development. Dump the Basel ban. 

Failure of Basel Convention

Initially the Convention -in force as of May 5, 1992- was criticized by environmental groups because it failed to effectively ban toxic waste exports to poor countries, succeeding only in excluding Antarctica as a destination for such waste. In 1995, however, and as a result of  pressure exerted by several countries and environmental groups, an amendment to the Convention was introduced, prohibiting all exports of contaminating material. This ban will only enter into force when the amendment is ratified by 62 of the countries party to the Convention (as of May 2003, 36 countries had already done so). In any event, the scope of the Convention is severely limited by the fact that the United States, the largest toxic residue producer in the world, is not among the signatories.

To date, the United States is the only developed country in the world that has not ratified the Basel Convention. In fact, US officials have actively worked to defeat and weaken the Basel waste export ban. The US government policies appear to be designed to promote sweeping the e-waste problem out the Asian back door. Not only has the US refused to ratify the Basel Convention and Ban, but in fact, the United States government has intentionally exempted e-waste materials, within the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, from the minimal laws that do exist (requiring prior notification of hazardous waste shipments) to protect importing countries. When questioned, officials at the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) admit that export is very much a part of the US e-waste disposal strategy and the only issue of concern for the US might be how to ensure minimal environmental standards abroad.[3]

Post-Basel International Developments

Municipal legislations

Various countries across the world have taken initiatives to tackle the problem by enacting National Legislations on monitoring and control of E-waste. Switzerland was the first country to have introduced a system to deal with e-waste in 1994. Countries like Australia, New Zealand, France, and China have also taken the clue form Switzerland and have stepped in the same direction.

The Ministerial Conference on the 3R

The Ministerial Conference on the 3R Initiative was held in Tokyo on 28-30 April 2005. During the conference, the 3R (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle) promotion in each country and the international flow of goods and materials were discussed For example, many Asian countries have faced the increasing waste generation accompanied with rapid economic growth, which involves transboundary movement of secondary materials. At the Ministerial Conference, "Japan’s Action Plan to Promote Global Zero-Waste Societies" was presented, which includes:

[1] Implementation of policy measures towards developing zero-waste policies in cooperation with various countries and institutions,

[2] Enhancement of the knowledge base and technology base to realize zero-waste societies in Asia.

Based on this Action Plan, it is significant for us researchers to support the sound 3R promotion at the domestic and international levels respectively, through the international cooperative research and accumulation of knowledge. Especially, electric and electronic waste, i.e. E-waste, is of high priority from the both viewpoints of research and policy targets.

We NIES have organized “Workshop on Material Cycles and Waste Management in Asia” annually since 2002. At the last workshop, “NIES E-waste Workshop”, held in December of 2004, we shared the current status and tasks for E-waste issues in international material cycles as well as in each country, and discussed the future tasks for the promotion of 3R of E-waste.

Proposals of the European Union as a solution for E-scrap

·         The draft WEEE Directive will phase-out the use of mercury, cadmium, hexavalent chromium and two classes of brominated flame-retardants in electronic and electrical goods by the year 2004.

·         It puts full financial responsibility on producers to set up collection, recycling and disposal systems.

·         Between 70% to 90% by weight of all collected equipment must be recycled or re-used. In the case of computers and monitors, 70% recycling must be met.

·         "Recycling" does not include incineration, so companies won’t be able to meet recycling goals by burning the waste.

·         For disposal, incineration with energy recovery is allowed for the 10% to 30% of waste remaining. However, components containing the following substances must be removed from any end of life equipment which is destined for landfill, incineration or recovery:

lead, mercury, hexavalent chromium, cadmium, PCBs, halogenated flame-retardants, radioactive substances, asbestos and beryllium.

·         Member states shall encourage producers to integrate an increasing quantity of recycled material in new products. Originally the EU stipulated that by 2004 new equipment must contain at least five percent of recycled plastic content but this provision was recently dropped because of intense industry lobbying. This is a major weakening of the directive, since on the one hand it encourages recycling but then does not stipulate recycled content in new products. Instead the revised Directive ‘encourages’ member states to set recycled content in their procurement policies.

·                     Producers must ddesign equipment that includes labels for recyclers that identify plastic types and location of all dangerous substances.

·                     Member states must collect information from producers on a yearly basis about quantities of equipment put on the market, both by numbers of units and by weight, as well as on the market saturation in the respective product sectors. This information will be transmitted to the EU Commission by 2004 and every three years after that date.

·                     Producers can undertake the treatment operation in another country, but this should not lead to shipments of WEEE to non-EU countries where no or lower treatment standards than in the EU exist. Accordingly, producers shall deliver WEEE only to those establishments which comply with the treatment and recycling requirements set out in the proposal and producers shall verify compliance through adequate certifications.

THE INDIAN SCENARIO

The situation is alarming. According to a survey by IRG Systems, South Asia, the total waste generated by obsolete or broken-down electronic and electrical equipment in India has been estimated to be 1,46,180 tons per year based on select EEE tracer items. This figure does not include WEEE imports. In December 2005, the British Environment Agency (BEA) published a report that pointed out that there were several companies exporting e-waste from the UK to India. Jim Puckett, the Coordinator of the Basel Action Network documents what he saw in China and similar unregulated recycling operations in Pakistan and India in a new report called Exporting Harm: The High Tech Trashing of Asia

The import of hazardous waste into India is actually prohibited by a 1997 Supreme Court directive, which reflects the Basel Ban. The developed world, however, finds it more convenient and also economical to export e-waste to the third world countries like India, rather than managing and incurring high environmental and economic cost. Primary investigations carried out for Basel Action Network revealed that indigenous as well as imported computer waste has lead to the emergence of a thriving market of computer waste products and processing units for material recovery in different parts of India. So trade in e-waste is camouflaged and is a thriving business in India, conducted under the pretext of obtaining reusable equipment or donations from developed nations. One basic reason for the said conundrum is the low cost of recycling of waste in India. While it costs about $20 to recycle an old computer in the United States, waste brokers sell the computer for export and make about $5 a piece, and according to Toxics Link, recycling a computer in India costs about $4. "So everyone makes money," said the Toxics Link study

The junkyards in India

End-of-life products find their way to recycling yards in countries such as India and China, where poorly-protected workers dismantle them, often by hand, in appalling conditions. About 25,000 workers are employed at scrap-yards in Delhi alone, where 10,000 to 20,000 tons of e-waste is handled every year, with computers accounting for 25 percent of it. Other e-waste scrap-yards exist in Meerut, Ferozabad, Chennai, Bangalore and Mumbai. About 80 percent of the e-waste generated in the US is exported to India, Many of India’s corporations burn e-waste such as PC monitors, PCBs, CDs, motherboards, cables, toner cartridges, light bulbs and tube-lights in the open along with garbage, releasing large amounts of mercury and lead into the atmosphere.

An apparent example can be taken of the Technologicla Capital of India –Bangalore that is choking under the garbage of e-products. As per a study done last year by Bangalore-based NGO, Saahas, that city generates around 8,000 tons of e-waste every year. It is true that the e- waste spectrum is broad, but we see that IT companies are the single largest contributors to the growing mountains of it. This is because 30 percent of their equipment is rendered obsolete every year. Home to more than 1,200 foreign and domestic technology firms, Bangalore figures prominently in the danger list of cities faced with e-waste hazard. However Officials of the state-run pollution board have woken up to the debilitating risk. The authorities have cleared the establishment of a 120-acre e-waste disposal facility at Dobbspet, 45km from the city. The project is a cooperative effort of HAWA (Hazardous Waste Management Project), an Indo-German collaboration.

The regulatory developments in India

India signed the Basel Convention in March 1990 and ratified it in June 1992. Prior to the ratification of the Basel convention, India had enacted the Hazardous Waste (Management and Handling) Rules 1989, which not only controlled the handling, treatment, transport and disposal of hazardous waste in India but also controlled the import of hazardous wastes from any part of the world into India. But the implementation of H.W. Rules has been peripheral and incidental.

In 1995 the Research Foundation For Science, Technology And National Resource Policy, filed the Writ Petition No. 657 challenging the imports of hazardous wastes into India in violation of the Basel Convention, after Greenpeace exposed the imports of waste zinc ash containing high levels of heavy metals by Bharat Zinc Limited. Acting on the petition, the Supreme Court banned the import of hazardous wastes in the country in 1997. As observed by the Supreme Court, “We have extensively perused the record. The material on record demonstrates that proper attention was not paid by the concerned authorities in implementing H.W. Rules, 1989.”

Though India has become the favourite dumping ground for the hazardous waste? Both the H.W. Rules as well as their implementation have been found wanting. Whereas the Basel Convention bans import of 76 items, the H. W. Rules 1989 bans just 29 items.

The Rule 11 of Hazardous Waste (Management & Handling) Rules, 1989 prohibits import of hazardous waster for dumping. However, the imports of hazardous waste are allowed for the purpose of recycling/recovering and use as raw material. The import of hazardous waste is also covered under the Basel Convention on Control of Tran boundary Movement of Hazardous Waste and their Disposal. The wastes permitted for import are required to be reprocessed in an environmentally sound manner.

In the new economy, environmentalists, policy-makers and the Pollution Control Boards would have to grapple with the new phenomenon called "E-waste or electronics waste," according to K.S. Neelakantan, Director, Directorate of Environment, Chennai. The Director said the Directorate of Environment and the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board were seized of the matter. They had intimated the Customs department to address the issue of E-waste by imposing restrictions on dumping of these goods.

A Supreme Court Monitoring Committee (SCMC) on hazardous wastes under the Chairmanship G Thyagarajan has also been constituted to monitor matters related to e-waste and other similar problems.  .

India's hardware organization, the Manufacturers Association of Information Technology (MAIT), has persuaded the government in Delhi to set up a federal agency to handle waste disposal.

The recycling of e-waste is undertaken in an unscientific manner, impacting both health and environment.[4] Recently, the Karnataka State Pollution Control Board has given authorisation for two commercial enterprises to handle e-waste in Bangalore—e-Parisaraa and Ash Recyclers. The authorised companies get e-waste from corporates to manage the menace following the rules and regulations set down by the Pollution Board.

Conclusion and Findings

Unlike many traditional wastes, the main environmental impacts of e-waste mainly arise due to inappropriate processing, rather than inherent toxic content. Also, drawing lines between secondary goods intended for reuse and wastes is difficult. There are social benefits to secondary markets, especially computers, as they make goods available to low income people, raising standards of living. Given that unregulated processing in developing countries generates income, there is a strong economic pull driving the creation of an informal sector, which poses a challenge for enforcement of regulations.

Inadequate governance

The IT sector is taking baby-steps towards dismantling e-waste through the organised sector. Says P Parthasarathy, Managing Director of e-Parisaraa, “IT companies are bypassing [the proper procedures to deal with] their obsolete hardware products through donations and the unorganized sector. The rules, regulations and maintenance of records involved in going through organized recyclers are holding back many companies.”

Additionally, the support from the Government is not up to expectations. The draft of the policy and guidelines for e-waste management which are ready are waiting for the approval of the Government adds Parthasarathy who is also a member of the e-waste management task force.

Government has to do

·                     Make e-waste policy and legislation

·                     Encourage organised system recycling

·                     Collecting fee from manufacturers/consumers for the disposal of toxic materials

·                     Should subsidise recycling and disposal industries

·                     Incentive schemes for garbage collectors and general public for collecting and handing over e-waste

·                     Awareness programme on e-waste for school children and general public

                                            Bibliography

Books

v  Kate O’ Neill, Waste Trading among Rich Nations, The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, (2000)

v  Parthu Dasgupta, R N Goran Moler, The Environment and Emerging Development Issues, Clarendon Press, Oxford< London (1997)

v  John R Wilcox, Louis Theodar, Engineering and Environmental Issies; A Case study approach, John Wiley & Sons, New York, (1998)

v  Yearbook of International Environmental Law (Vol 1), Gunther Hanks (ed.), Graham & Trotman, London (1990)

Websites

v  http://www.greenpeace.org

v  http://www.theage.com

v  http://www.thehindu.com

v  http://www.toxiclink.org

v  http://www.greennature.com

v  http://www.basel.int

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[1] Compare Risk Reduction Monograph No 1 Lead - Background and national experience with reducing risk, OECD Paris, 1993

[2] Scand J Work Environ Health 98; Environmental impacts of cadmium, Gerrit H. Vonkeman 199

[3] Exporting Harm: the High-tech Trashing of Asia

[4] K K Shajahan, Principal Consultant, Indian Institute of Material Management, Bangalore