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III. ELECTRONIC WASTE AND EXTENDED PRODUCER RESPONSIBILITY
- Temple University Press
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III. ELECTRONIC WASTE AND EXTENDED PRODUCER RESPONSIBILITY LESLIE A. BYSTER AND WEN-LING TU THE WORLD’S LANDFILLS are rapidly being filled with toxic waste from obsolete electronic and electrical equipment and accessories. The mountains of “e-waste” have been growing so rapidly that they have spawned dangerous new waste-salvaging operations in China, India, Pakistan, the Philippines, and other low-income countries. The European Union (EU) is instituting its new Directive on Waste from Electronics and Electrical Equipment (WEEE) in an attempt to curtail this tide of toxic junk. Electronics is at the forefront not only of manufacturing, occupational health, and environmental justice issues throughout the world, but also of the growing movement calling on manufacturers to take responsibility for their products’ entire life cycles, up to and including disposal. Product life-cycle analysis is integral to the movement for what has come to be known as extended producer responsibility (EPR). Among the distinct phases in the life cycles of electronics products are design, manufacturing, assembly , consumption, and disposal. Although earlier sections of this book have focused on the manufacturing and assembly phases, Part III focuses on links between the life cycle’s “alpha” and “omega”: product design and “end-of-life management.” Until recently, few manufacturers in any sector have taken responsibility for what happens to their products once they become obsolete. In fact, planned obsolescence historically has been a key feature of the market-oriented, production–consumption life cycle. Globalization of the entire electronics product life cycle has led to a disproportionate distribution of negative environmental and public health impacts to areas far from the locations of product design and product use. Locating suppliers and 202 LESLIE A. BYSTER AND WEN-LING TU assemblers throughout the world has led to manufacturing efficiencies and lowcost products. Yet, too often, as production moves down the supply chain, toward regions with weaker environmental and occupational protection and enforcement, lower income and less powerful communities face the hazards of toxic exposure, from production to disposal. Indeed, the costs and consequences of product disposal are now globally distributed in ways that artificially reduce their true costs. These so-called life-cycle costs of computers and commercial electronics remain hidden from the public so that consumers and policymakers can easily ignore them. The challenges of managing global supply chains—even in cases where management is well intentioned—is daunting and is only beginning to be understood , much less addressed by the original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). This emerging framework is being supplemented with new strategies by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) working in the environmental policy arena as well as on international corporate campaigns to leverage environmental commitment and performance in the high-tech sector. Such campaigns are becoming an important counterbalance to the downward pressures of economic globalization. The effectiveness of environmental strategies to promote clean production , pollution prevention, and responsible control of e-waste flow, particularly in developing countries, still relies primarily on effective local environmental practices, monitoring, and enforcement. Part III of this volume examines how these issues are intertwined when the products created by the electronics industry are discarded, resulting in huge quantities of e-waste destined for landfills or export (Puckett; Geiser and Tickner; Agarwal and Wankhade). It also examines grassroots efforts to address these concerns and proposes a “triad of sustainability” (environmental justice, the precautionary principle, and extended producer responsibility; Byster and Smith) as a framework for more enlightened corporate practices (Wood and Schneider) and environmental policy, both in the United States (Raphael and Smith) and globally (Geiser and Tickner; Tojo). The chapter by Byster and Smith provides an overview of the impacts of hightech production and offers examples of groundwater overuse and contamination that occurred as the industry expanded out of Silicon Valley, California. It asserts that given the industry’s projected growth, its use of chemicals and resources is not sustainable; the authors therefore propose the triad of sustainability as a policy framework. Yoshida’s chapter looks at past soil and groundwater contamination by Japan’s high-tech manufacturing industry, as well as more recent efforts to remediate that toxic legacy. He finds that a strong legal infrastructure and active citizen involvement are essential to environmental protection and restoration. Puckett examines the widespread practice of exporting hazardous electronic waste (e-waste) from the United States to China, India, and other low-wage, newly [3.229.124.236] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 11:02 GMT) Electronic Waste and Extended Producer Responsibility 203 industrializing countries. He...