Challenging the Chip: Labor Rights and Environmental Justice in the Global Electronics Industry

20. High-Tech’s Dirty Little Secret: The Economics and Ethics of the Electronic Waste Trade

JIM PUCKETT 20 High-Tech’s Dirty Little Secret The Economics and Ethics of the Electronic Waste Trade IN FEBRUARY 2002, theBaselActionNetwork(BAN),togetherwith the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition (SVTC), released the report, Exporting Harm: The High-tech Trashing of Asia. That report, and a subsequent BAN film of the same name, revealed to the public for the first time a disturbing fact—that about 80 percent of the electronic wastes collected in North America for “recycling” actually find their way, quite legally, to dangerously primitive, highly polluting recycling operations in Asia (see Photos 20.1 and 20.2). European recycling insiders have calculated the export figures for their own continent at 60 percent despite European Union (EU) laws banning such export. The report revealed that waste “recyclers” are often no more than waste “distributors,” involved in a very lucrative form of postconsumer, toxic-waste export toward which policy makers and electronics manufacturers have been content to turn a blind eye. The investigation centered on the Guiyu region of Guangdong Province in Southern China, where displaced farmers from outlying provinces labor for about US$1.50 per day, burning wires, melting brominated flame-retardant impregnated plastics and lead-solder-laden circuit boards, and stripping chips and connectors with strong acid solutions on riverbanksways, all taking place without basic protections against occupational disease and environmental contamination. Almost three years after the release of that report, nongovernmental organization (NGO) members and journalists have made follow-up visits to Guiyu, another scrap-processing center in the Taizhou city area, south of Shanghai, and e-waste-processing centers in India. Reports from these visits have revealed that, despite the initial shame and dismay expressed by the electronics and recycling industries, and the horrific images now well etched in the public’s mind following the release of the groundbreaking exposé, the use of Asia as a global dumping ground for electronic waste from developed countries appears to continue unabated. The exploitation of low-wage, desperate communities and workforces, under the green rubric of “recycling” continues to take its toll through devastating immediate and long-term ecological and human health impacts. THE DIRTY LITTLE SECRET These ongoing exposés have alerted us to a “dirty little secret” of the hightech industry. Not only did we all become aware of the previously unknown 226 JIM PUCKETT PHOTO 20.1. Migrant child from Hunan province sits atop one of countless piles of unrecyclable computer waste imported from around the world. Guiyu, China, December 2001. Courtesy of Basel Action Network. dangers lurking inside of our electronic equipment, but also we discovered a tacit stratagem by the electronics industry to avoid both accountability and real downstream cost for its hazardous materials use and poor end-of-life design considerations. Free trade became a mechanism that allowed these liabilities to be shunted to unsuspecting, disempowered communities and desperate labor forces. This passive strategy of convenient exploitation to boost profits created a false economic system, where the bill for the damage done is neither presented to nor paid by those most responsible. And this exploitive trade is facilitated via the green gloss provided by cooptation of the word “recycling.” Although some may be distressed that recycling’s good name has been thus sullied, it is important to realize that recycling, like any industry, can be dangerous and harmful to environments and populations, and this is especially likely whenever toxic materials are involved. Although it is abundantly clear that the true solutions to our toxics crisis lie not in recycling wastes downstream, rather in eliminating them through “green design” upstream, an industry addicted to convenient cost externalization to the weak and impoverished seeks different conclusions. THE FOURTH R: RESPONSIBILITY The industry hopes to reduce the problems inherent in this form of toxic trade to a matter of simply accomplishing the three R’s (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle) High-Tech’s Dirty Little Secret 227 PHOTO 20.2. Woman in Guiyu, China, about to smash a computer monitor tube to remove copper. The biggest hazard from this activity is inhalation of highly toxic phosphor dust coating inside the tube. Monitor glass is later dumped in irrigation canals and along the river where it leaches lead into the groundwater, which is so contaminated that drinking water must be trucked in. December 2001. Courtesy of Basel Action Network. with “appropriate technology.” And although espousing this catch-phrase, it is inevitable that most of...