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LESLIE A. BYSTER AND TED SMITH 18 The Electronics Production Life Cycle From Toxics to Sustainability: Getting Off the Toxic Treadmill THE INFORMATION AGE has been fueled by an exponential increase in the production of high-tech electronic components, including semiconductors , integrated circuits, disk drives, printed circuit boards, video display equipment, and many other consumer products. As electronics manufacturing has expanded out of its birthplace in Silicon Valley and proliferated around the globe, so too, has the number of facilities manufacturing the materials and chemicals used in the production process, in waste treatment, and in waste disposal. The high-tech industry’s unprecedented globalization has been facilitated by the development and adoption of trade agreements such as the Multilateral Agreement on Initiatives and Central America Free Trade Agreement and institutions as the World Trade Organization. As the “incubator” of the global electronics industry, Silicon Valley served as a textbook case for other cities, states, and even nations seeking the “silicon” blueprint to recreate the wealth and prosperity of California’s Silicon Valley. SHATTERING THE MYTHS Although electronics manufacturing has carefully cultivated the image of a clean, smokestack-free industry with relatively few environmental or occupational health hazards, the reality is starkly different. During the past 25 years in Silicon Valley, as well as in other regions where the industry is operating , many production-related environmental and occupational health hazards have been identified and addressed. More recently, a new threat has been uncovered: the growing piles of electronic waste created by rapid product obsolescence. Personalcomputers(PCs)andotherelectronicequipmentareastonishingly resource-intensive to produce. Massive amounts of chemicals, water, and energy are required in the production process. Most people are astonished to learn that the manufacture of a single silicon chip requires 1.7 kilograms of fossil fuels and chemicals and 32 kilograms of water (Williams, Ayers, and Heller 2002). Likewise, it is difficult for most people to believe that about 1.8 tons of raw materials are required to manufacture the average desktop PC and monitor (Kuehr and Williams 2003). Manufacturing a single PC involves a witch’s brew of over a thousand chemicals, many of which are known or suspected carcinogens or reproductive toxins. These high-tech toxics have been linked to elevated rates of cancer 206 BYSTER AND SMITH and birth defects among workers and community residents in a growing number of high-tech centers around the world, and substantial groundwater contamination has become part of the “legacy” of the industry’s development. This chapter presents an overview of the environmental impacts of electronics manufacturing—inside and outside the workplace. It also proposes that a “triad of sustainability”—based on environmental justice (EJ), the precautionary principle, and extended producer responsibility (EPR)—must be integrated into business practices and become as global in the culture and conduct of electronics manufacturing as is the industry itself. WATER USE AND CONTAMINATION It has been well documented that semiconductor chip manufacturing requires vast amounts of water. As a consequence of the industry’s insatiable thirst, groundwater reserves in many high-tech regions have been depleted and contaminated by the chip-making process. The Silicon Valley story has received significant attention and is described in more detail elsewhere in this book (see Byster and Smith, “From Grassroots to Global”; Hawes and Pellow; Pellow and Matthews, this volume). As dozens of high-tech electronics companies established semiconductor fabrication facilities (“fabs”) in Silicon Valley and later in the new “Silicons,” New Mexico and Arizona (two of the most arid states in the United States), the technology boom was accompanied by the telltale footprints of electronics manufacturing—the twin problems of water contamination and overuse. In Arizona (Silicon Desert), the groundwater near Phoenix was contaminated by a Motorola chip plant. The 15-mile-long toxic plume of trichloroethylene (TCE) is 500 feet deep in some places (Plazola 1997, 47). Three of the seven Superfund sites in the Phoenix area are the result of high-tech manufacturing pollution and 46 of the 98 groundwater wells that have been closed were due to high-tech contamination, mostly from chlorinated solvents . Based on available supplies and projected growth rates, the demand for water will exceed supply by 2010 due, in part, to this contamination, the projected population growth, and the industry’s demands (Plazola 1997, 42). The Intel plant near Albuquerque, New Mexico (Silicon Mesa), has used nearly 1.6 billion gallons per year (Harttranft 1996). The projected increase to 2.1 billion gallons may impact water sources, including...

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