| Constantly improving electronic technology is leading consumers to replace their old TVs, monitors, VCRs, cellphones and palm pilots with newer, faster, smaller or bigger models, which is creating a growing problem in our landfills.
In 1999, Canadians disposed of almost 34,000 tonnes of personal computer equipment, which is equivalent to 22,000 cars (at an average weight of 1.5 tonnes). Cellphones are used for an average of 18 months before being tossed for newer models. In 2001, there were 128 million cellphones in use in the U.S. – there are now more than a billion worldwide.
Some old equipment gets passed on or donated, some is simply stored, but most electronic waste, or "e-waste," eventually ends up in landfills. Not only are there growing mountains of it, but toxic ingredients such as lead, zinc and cadmium get released when equipment is disassembled improperly or exposed to certain conditions in landfills, which can in turn contaminate our soil and groundwater.
There are two to four kilograms of lead in a computer monitor. Lead has well-documented detrimental effects on the central nervous system, blood, kidneys and child brain development. Forty percent of all lead in landfills now comes from consumer electronics. By 2005, 300 million computers containing over one billion pounds of lead will have become obsolete in the U.S., according to a National Safety Council report.
Using current deposit recycling programs as a model, there’s an effort afoot to have manufacturers take responsibility for e-waste. The Computer TakeBack Campaign is an American grassroots organization officially launched in January 2003 at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The organization’s objective is to ban expended electronics from landfills by holding brand-name manufacturers responsible for their own end-of-life products. The guiding principle is called "Extended Producer Responsibility," under which manufacturers are pressured to restrict the use of hazardous materials, and to design products that are durable, repairable, upgradeable and easy to disassemble and recycle.
Canadian electronics manufacturers are also taking steps to put a program in place, announcing the formation of a new coalition, Electronics Product Stewardship Canada (www.epsc.ca). One of the recommendations is to charge consumers recycling fees at the time of purchase – from $8 for CPUs to $25 for televisions. The coalition foresees e-waste getting plugged into municipal waste collection procedures – fees collected would go towards the retrieval of materials from waste transfer stations, and subsequent dismantling. Manufacturers would prefer to self-regulate, and the initiative is pre-emptive in order to avoid government regulations they might consider problematic.
A different point of view comes from Helen Spiegelman, president of the Vancouver-based Society Promoting Environmental Conservation. She disagrees with the municipal collection solution, stating there is no reason why garbage service for disposable products and excess packaging should be a community service.
Spiegelman’s position is that the marketplace in general should devise a process whereby it takes full responsibility for its own end-of-life products. Manufacturers would then be more inclined to produce less waste in their packaging, and to reduce the planned obsolescence in the design of their products.
"We need to move past a vision of cities and towns being responsible for providing end-of-life management of the diverse and complex products that are sold in the marketplace," Spiegelman says.
What can Calgarians do about e-waste while all this gets sorted out? The city, in association with a&b sound, is holding its first annual electronics recycling round-up day on Saturday, May 10.
The waste will be recycled by Alberta’s Maxus Technology, which opened a state-of-the-art electronics recycling facility in September 2002 in Rimbey. So far, a lot of Maxus’s materials have come from municipalities, universities, schools and hospitals – their "MUSH" clients, as president Shelly Whatmore calls them – as well as many corporate clients. The 37,000 square foot facility has a staff of 25 people. When e-cycling becomes routine, Maxus could process up to 5 million pounds of electronic waste annually, and employ 120 people.
The 500,000 pounds that Whatmore estimates will be collected in upcoming recycling drives in Western Canada is less than 0.5 per cent of what Environment Canada predicts Canadians will dispose of in 2005. Whatmore says every item Maxus processes gets resold, refurbished or recycled.
Maxus signed an "Electronics Recycler Pledge of True Stewardship" in August 2002, declaring that no harmful components will be landfilled or shipped overseas. This pledge is with respect to an international treaty, the Basel Convention, which prohibits the dumping of toxic wastes in foreign countries. One estimate has 50 to 80 per cent of U.S. e-waste currently being shipped to Asia, where it is regularly dismantled by workers unprotected from its harmful components.
The Seattle-based Basel Action Network (BAN), which monitors adherence to the treaty, discovered Canadian e-waste in China last year, via little telltale clues like tags from the Department of National Defense and Air Canada attached to equipment. Canada has ratified the Basel Convention, and although China has banned the import of e-waste, it is difficult to monitor – a loophole exists because intact electronics are not toxic.
In Canada, the environmental impact of waste is a provincial jurisdiction – the provinces have begun a dialogue with manufacturers and recyclers to develop a working plan, but waiting until collection and disposal infrastructures are in place is not a wise choice. Ultimately, there will probably be some unavoidable cost to consumers, but in the meantime, don’t throw out your old electronics – if they can’t be reused, bring them to the round-up.
What can be recycled
The Calgary electronics recycling round-up will be held May 10 from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at three locations: Anderson LRT Station, Brentwood LRT Station and Deerfoot Outlet Mall.
Acceptable items include: answering machines, calculators, cellular phones, compact discs, compact disc players, car stereos, computer hard drives, digital cameras, DVD players, DVD discs, electronic typewriters, fax machines, floppy disks, games boxes, home stereos, laptop computers, laser discs, mainframe computers, mobile phones, modems, networking equipment, pagers, palm pilots, personal computers, portable music devices, power surge protectors, printers, printed circuit boards, projection systems, radios, record players, remote controls, scanners, satellite receivers, tape players, telephones, testing equipment, televisions (no consoles), uninterruptable power supplies, VCRs, video cameras.
For more information about the Calgary event, visit the city’s Web site at www.calgary.ca. |
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