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

25. ToxicDude.com: The Dell Campaign

DAVID WOOD AND ROBIN SCHNEIDER 25 ToxicDude.com The Dell Campaign SMALLER, FASTER, and cheaper—these are the defining qualities of today’s computers and consumer electronics. Yet, despite the persistent pace of design advancements in consumer electronics, product designers often have largely ignored the public health threats and environmental consequences of the choices they make—from materials use to end-of-life management . The rapid proliferation of computers and consumer electronics has resulted in a global mountain of high-tech trash, a culture of obsolescence, and new products being designed for disposability rather than reuse and recycling (see Photo 25.1).1 IT’S TIME TO REBOOT THE SYSTEM The Computer TakeBack Campaign (CTBC) was formed in early 2001 by a small group of environmental health and waste-reduction activists from the United States and Canada, in conjunction with organized labor and socially responsible investors, to hold corporations producing and marketing computers and consumer electronics accountable for the life-cycle effects of their products, particularly those sold in the United States (see Raphael and Smith, this volume). At issue were both the quantity and the toxicity of electronic waste (“e-waste”), because if electronics are less toxic and more recyclable at the waste end, the production process also will be less hazardous for the workers and surrounding communities. The CTBC network of local, state, and national organizations works to establish and promote the principle of extended producer responsibility (EPR; see Appendix D, this volume). In two years, the CTBC defined the e-waste problem; organized broad support for a comprehensive, sustainable solution; and forced the U.S. computer industry’s leading company—Dell Computer Corporation—to respond and begin reshaping its company policies. A New Kind of Corporate Accountability The CTBC’s genesis emerged from the confluence of two important North American grassroots movements: environmental health and resource conservation . First are organizations like Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition (SVTC), whose two decades of victories for cleaner high-tech production has focused on the need for continuing product and process design changes and eliminating the use of toxic materials that injure workers, communities, and families. In the second group are such organizations as the GrassRoots Recycling Network (GRRN), with advanced strategies beyond recycling, which manage 286 WOOD AND SCHNEIDER PHOTO 25.1. Activists at the annual “MacWorld” trade show, protesting Apple Computer Inc.’s contributions to rapidly accumulating e-waste, San Francisco, January 2005. Courtesy of Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition. waste at the end of the pipe. GRRN also critiques the reliance on taxpayer dollars to manage problems created by manufacturers’ unsustainable design choices over which local governments and consumers have little control. For both movements, the answer was EPR, the emerging global framework that holds producers and brand owners financially responsible for their products’ life-cycle effects and emphasizes product take-back and end-of-life management (see Raphael and Smith, this volume). The power of EPR as a policy tool and organizing strategy attracted other organizations and constituencies to the CTBC,2 and drew more activists and organizations into the campaign for sustainable production and consumption in the electronics industry. Ten U.S.-based organizations developed a platform in March 2001 that has been endorsed by hundreds of people in dozens of countries.3 Product designers, corporate-accountability activists, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) concerned with local economic development and job creation, organized labor, students, socially responsible investors, and environmentalists gave shape to the CTBC, developing and disseminating a comprehensive platform that animates the CTBC’s goal statement: “Take it back, Make it clean, and Recycle responsibly.” The CTBC’s EPR policy suggested two possible strategies, which were quickly recognized as providing complementary points of leverage: r Build sustained consumer and market pressure on Dell Computer Corporation;4 and r Build public support for regulatory reforms embracing producer responsibility . ToxicDude.com 287 The CTBC member organizations recognized that the prospects of an EPR solution coming from the top down at the start of the George W. Bush years in 2000 were virtually nonexistent. However, state-level efforts to ban the disposal of e-waste in landfills were successful in a handful of states. Why Dell? In the personal computer (PC) industry sector, which is populated by nearly two dozen known name brands and scores of component suppliers throughout the computer equipment supply chain, the Dell Corporation stood out as the clear target for the CTBC...