The shipment of e-waste from developed to developing countries, was prohibited in 1989 by the Basel Convention, but has not been ratified by Afghanistan, Haiti or the United States (the largest global producer of e-waste.) This rapidly expanding uncontrolled waste stream has major effects on developing states such as China and Nigeria.

 Christine Cutting

DISRES 697: University of Massachusetts, Boston

December 22, 2010

Table of Contents

Table of Contents.
Introduction: 1
Global Leaders in E-Waste Accountability. 2
Global Laggard: The United States. 3
E-Waste Importing Countries. 4
Case Study: China. 5
Case Study: Nigeria. 6
Policy Recommendations: 7

Immediate Adoption of US GAO Recommendation to Ratify the Basel Convention and Adopt a Single National Strategy for Recycling of E-Waste  8

Enforcement of OECD 1986 Council Decision: 9

Create Categories for E-Waste and Used Electronics under the Harmonized Tariff System.. 10

Acronyms and Abbreviations. 11

Works Cited. 12

Introduction:

Electronic waste, also known as e-waste, is comprised of discarded computers, television sets, microwave ovens, and other such appliances that are past their useful lives.  As managing e-waste becomes a priority, Countries are being forced to develop new models for the collection and environmentally sound disposal of the waste (Sinha-Khetriwal, Kraeuchi and Schwaninger 2005, 492).

The shipment of e-waste from developed to developing countries was formally prohibited in 1989 with the adoption of the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movement of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal.  The convention requires that ratifying countries ensure any hazardous wastes exchanged across borders ‘are managed and disposed of in an environmentally sound manner.’ It also requires that any trade between signatories would require the prior informed consent and sound disposal of waste by the importing state (Dreher and Pulver 2008, 308).  Though concerned with all types of hazardous waste and their transfer, the shortened life-cycle and continuing technological revolution which has led to rapid obsolescence of electronics has heightened the need adhere to the fundamental tenants of the Basel Convention namely the:

• Reduction of transboundary movements of hazardous and other wastes subject to the Convention
• Prevention and minimization of their generation
• Environmentally sound management of such waste
• Active promotion of the transfer and use of cleaner technologies

(Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal 1989)

The Convention and its subsequent amendments have been ratified by nearly all signatory countries, with the exception of Afghanistan, Haiti and notably, the United States of America. As the largest global producer of e-waste, the unwillingness of the US to ratify the Convention continues to represent a significant gap in global accountability for e-waste disposal, and its continued exportation to developing states such as India, Pakistan, China, Ghana and Nigeria. States which import e-waste are ill-equipped to undertake recycling regimes capable of handling the hazardous waste associated with e-waste and its implications for human health and the environment. Despite the ban, accountability has remained low.  The rapidly expanding electronic waste stream is largely uncontrolled at the global level and impossible, under current regulations, to control.  Ad hoc systems around the globe have sprung up to try to combat the flow of hazardous waste from North to South – both in the EU, and among individual states in the US, where the vast majority of e-waste originates.  It is clear that without the full and complete cooperation of the United States, accountability will remain a difficult to achieve.

Global Leaders in E-Waste Accountability

The European Union has been successful in integrating the principles of the Basel Convention treaty into its own legislation, emerging as a global leader in hazardous and e-waste policy.  A large contributor of e-waste, this represents a significant departure from policy in the United States.  Among the leaders in this push has been Switzerland.

Over the past decade, Switzerland has implemented an industry-wide system for the collection and recycling of electronic waste that has been mirrored across the European Union.  Based on the polluter-pays principle, the Swiss system assesses consumers an Advance Recycling Fee (ARF) at the point of purchase, and is used later to pay for the collection, transport and recycling costs of the disposed appliance later on. The fee, variable with the complexity of the electronic item purchased, is meant to be easily understood by the consumer and transparent.  Called an ‘intergenerational contract between appliances purchased in the past and those that will be purchased in the future’ the ARF has been likened to a pension system for electronics (Sinha-Khetriwal, Kraeuchi and Schwaninger 2005, 495).  This system has been largely successful.  It has not discouraged the demand for new products, a fear of producers, nor has it cross-subsidized products across different categories, a fear of consumers (Ibid, 495).  In terms of recycling, Switzerland maintains controls to prevent the internationalization of its e-waste by way of export by obtaining the prior-informed consent of the importing OECD country and by demanding documentation that waste has been disposed of in an environmentally sound manner (Ibid, 497).

Global environmental leadership has become a central pillar of the foreign policy of the European Union. Demonstrated by the ratification of the Basel Convention and similar treaties, the EU has demonstrated its understanding that the internationalization of trade of hazardous materials merely shifts the burden of responsibility onto importing countries.   In making this connection, the EU leadership have recognized the environmental and health threat that e-waste poses. Given the population and landmass of Europe, it is quickly evident that Europe’s ecological vulnerability has informed this position. “The USA and EU are both large producers of hazardous waste and face high domestic disposal costs, resulting in high abatement costs.  Moreover, as waste exporters, both entities have low ecological vulnerability.  If waste export is not an option, the EU can be considered more ecologically vulnerable because of its higher population density.  Yet of the two countries, only the USA has acted in line with an interest-based framework (Dreher and Pulver 2008, 309).”[1]

Figure 1 (Dreher and Pulver 2008, 310)

The boom in electronics innovation over the last half-century has led to levels of consumer consumption never before imagined.  Companies have promised faster speed, clearer picture, and improved efficiency with each new product generation.  In the United States it was shown that in 2008, more than 3 million tons of e-waste were generated. “About 85 percent of this equipment ended up in landfills.  Only about 18 percent of the year’s discarded computers and televisions – and only 10 percent of used cell phones – were recycled (Grossman 2010, 3).”  As consumers, most Americans remain unaware of the externalized costs of their electronics waste and its implications for human health and the environment.  “As technology zoomed ahead, we paid more and more attention to what the gigabytes could deliver in the way of information, communications, and entertainment, while ignoring the material impacts: the real mountains of plastics, metals, leaded glass, and toxic chemicals that grew higher and higher each time we upgraded our hardware (Ibid, 3).”  This adapted ignorance, coupled with the pressures to allow free-trade to dominate our foreign policy response to transboundary movement of waste was what led to the current US position on the Basel Convention.

Framing the issue in a much different way than the European Union, the US government position on transboundary movement of hazardous waste has been shaped by its insistence that the free market would determine the viability of such trade.  “From the US perspective, continued North-South trade in hazardous waste both provided developing countries with economically valuable materials in the form of recoverable waste and avoided the financial costs that would be imposed by a ban on waste trade (Dreher and Pulver 2008, 309).”  As such, the US continues to export the bulk of its e-waste to the developing world, namely Asia and Africa.

The framing of e-waste, in purely economic terms, fails to take into account the true health and ecological costs of such a practice.  By externalizing those costs, neither the government nor the consumer is faced with the reality that most consumer electronics contain toxic materials numbering in the dozens.

If disposed of or handled improperly, as they often have been, used electronics can create hazards to human health and the environment.  Many of these materials also pose occupational health hazards for those working in electronics manufacturing and recycling.  Some of the most hazardous include metals (among them cadmium, lead, and mercury) and plastics made of numerous synthetic chemicals, including many persistent and bioaccumulative pollutants.  Some of these plastics, if burned, as they often are in incinerators or dumps in developing countries can release carcinogens.  In 2001, an EPA report found that discarded electronics accounted for approximately 70 percent of the heavy metals found in U.S. landfills.  Given their metal and synthetic chemical contents, a dumpster full of discarded computers is considered hazardous wastes. Yet in most states in the U.S. it is still perfectly legal to put a computer or television in the trash (Grossman 2010, 3-4).

In the United States, waste management is considered a capacity of each individual state.  It is financed by those governments and/or individual taxpayers.  The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulates the management of used electronics which qualify as hazardous waste and acts to coordinate voluntary efforts to recycle such products among manufacturers, consumers and other stakeholders.

Further compounding the problem, the absence of a national policy has led to state enacted policies that have made it increasingly difficult for electronics manufacturers to keep pace with each state’s regulations.   Most state laws rely on the model of producer responsibility.  By design, these laws make it the responsibility of manufacturers to finance, collect and recycle used electronics (United States Government Accountability Office 2010, 15).  The US GAO assessment found that,

Depending on the specific provisions of state laws, examples of the duplicative requirements that individual manufacturers described as burdensome included paying annual registration fees to multiple state governments, submitting multiple reports to state environmental agencies, reviewing and paying invoices submitted by multiple recyclers and conducting legal analyses of state laws to determine the responsibilities placed on manufacturers (Ibid, 15).

With disproportionate responsibility born by manufacturers in different states, this strategy quickly becomes a compliance nightmare. It is prohibitively expensive to execute on a national scale. Neither manufacturers, nor the EPA has the capacity to ensure that all state requirements and deadlines are met, and consumers cannot ever expect the kind of stability which would make collection and recycling of e-waste a convenient task for them.

The argument once made by manufactures that a model of extended producer responsibility would lead to trade barriers and have adverse financial consequences has been disproven.  Looking back to the comprehensive model used in the European Union, the industry has not experienced either of those maladies.  Instead, “the industry is thriving even as manufacturers, in proportion to their market share, are now involved in financing and managing electronics recycling programs across the EU (Grossman 2010, 9).”  Were the US to adopt a similar strategy nationally, it would ease the compliance burden on manufacturers and allow for greater consumer awareness and participation in e-waste recycling efforts.

The absence of a comprehensive national approach to combat e-waste has raised questions about the effectiveness of the strategy, as well as concerns regarding the patchwork of state requirements for recycling (United States Government Accountability Office 2010, Executive Summary).   This has not always been the case.  In 1992 the US Senate was willing to ratify the Basel Convention under the Clinton administration.  For unknown reasons, President Clinton delayed sending Congress the required legislation until 1994.  In that time, the Convention had been amended, creating an increasing gap between the US position and that of the world.

The passing of Decisions I/22 (December 1992), II/12 (March 1994) and III/1 (September 1995) at the First, Second, and Third Conferences of the Parties (COPs) to the Basel Convention respectively, played a significant part in the USA backing down from attempts to ratify and implement the Convention.  Decision I/22 requested, but did not require, that developed countries prohibit the export of was for final disposal to all developing countries.  Decision II/12 further added that the ban on waste shipments between developed and developing countries should also pertain to waste destined for recovery or recycling.  Finally, Decision III/1, the 1995 Basel Ban Amendment, made both of these bans legally binding.  The USA was vehemently opposed to a ‘blanket ban’, which eliminated the kind of flexibility in waste trading policies it demanded, especially in relation to waste exports destined for recovery/recycling (Dreher and Pulver 2008, 314-315).

Opting out of the global framework for e-waste governance, the US has found itself in a position where domestic hazardous waste regulations are increasingly prohibitive of the dismantling and disposal of e-waste, while at the same time, consumer demand for such products grows ever-larger.  Lacking the capacity and facilities to dispose of waste here, it must look to overseas markets to rid itself of the waste.  Citizens in 23 states have mobilized to try to reform their state’s approach to disposal of e-waste; however their efforts can only go so far.  Individual states lack the capacity to regulate or ban specific products for export.

In and of itself, the ability of a state program to improve collection rates does not necessarily ensure that used electronics will be recycled in an environmentally friendly manner.  Key issued raised by environmental groups as complicating the effectiveness of state programs include a lack of adequate requirements for the environmentally sound management of used electronics or the requirements that differ among states, limited state resources or oversight to ensure compliance with the requirements and a lack of authority to address concerns about exports.  For example, a representative of the Basel Action Network  said that provisions in state laws regarding exports, such as those in California, could be challenged on constitutional grounds since the Constitution generally gives the federal government the authority to regulate commerce with foreign nations, thereby limiting states’ authorities to do so (United States Government Accountability Office 2010, 25).

Despite Basel Convention ratification endorsements by the EPA, GAO and major domestic stakeholder groups such as the Basel Action Network (BAN), the export ban remains the major sticking-point for Congressional support to ratify the treaty.

E-Waste Importing Countries

It is often said that States that consider importation of e-waste are asked to make the untenable choice between economic success and human and environmental health.  Certain states have emerged as e-waste clearinghouses, despite their ratification of the Basel Convention.  Chief among them are China, India and Pakistan in Asia, and Nigeria and Ghana in Africa.  Between them, these countries receive the bulk of globally exported e-waste.

Hands down, China is the largest global importer of e-waste.  With large and inexpensive workforce, China receives an estimated 80 percent of the e-waste shipped from the United States.  The vast majority of e-waste processing in China takes place in backyard workshops, where workers manually disassemble products for their valued parts, and then burn the remainder in open pits.  Extensive international media coverage of e-waste disposal sites in places like Guyiu, China has broadcast images of such practices around the world, leading to a Chinese effort to ‘clean up’ its e-waste act.  In conjunction Basel endorsed projects,

several large-scale facilities with formal and advanced technical processes have been built or are being planned and constructed… All of these facilities are spread along the east coast of China where there is a relatively developed economy. Two of the facilities have started operating but at present the raw materials for recycling are mainly by-products from the manufacture of electronic products as very few end-of-life electronic appliances are collected and transported to them (Liu, Tanaka and Matsui 2006, 100).

As long as the informal economy reins in China, large scale facilities will lose out.  The high cost of pollution control paid by such facilities is not born by those entrepreneurs operating out of backyard workshops.   Citing lack of resources, Ni and Zheng argue that very often in China, “laws or regulations are enacted without adequate resources allocated to enforcement.  For example, numerous banners reading along the lines of ‘Dealing in imported used electronics is an act of smuggling’ can be found in the streets of Gyuiu, yet an illegal e-waste recycling business remains active in the region (Ni and Zeng 2009, 3993).”  Undercutting the state system and without effective regulation to prevent it, e-waste will struggle to find its way to the state-run facilities.

Primarily concerned with materials recovery, entrepreneurial Chinese business owners often elect to violate Chinese and international law by importing containerships of e-waste from around the world in order to recover many of the heavy and precious minerals contained within them.

Modern electronics can contain up to 60 different elements; many are valuable, some are hazardous and some are both.  The most complex mix of substances is usually present in the printed wiring boards (PWBs).  In its entity electrical and electronic equipment is a major consumer of many precious and special metals and therefore an important contributor to the world’s demand for metals.  Despite all legislative efforts to establish a circular flow economy in the developed countries/EU, the majority of valuable resources today are lost.  Several causes can be identified: firstly, insufficient collection efforts, secondly, partly inappropriate recycling technologies; thirdly, and above all large and often illegal exports streams of e-waste into regions with no or inappropriate recycling infrastructures in place.  Large emissions of hazardous substances are associated with this.  Unfortunately, these regions with inappropriate recycling infrastructure are often located in developing and transition countries.  (DTIE 2010, 9).

BAN has called Lagos, Nigeria a ‘hotbed’ of high-tech growth and impressive entrepreneurial spirit.  The effort to frame this as a ‘bridge over the digital divide’ where unwanted electronic equipment is sent to Nigeria to be refurbished and reused is often cited by e-waste exporting countries as an example of e-waste ‘done right.’  Factually, Nigeria does have a an emerging population with desire for electronics such as mobile phones and computers.  Accordingly, statistics show a boom in penetration of phone and internet access across the country.  The workforce in places like Lagos is highly skilled, low wage and bursting with entrepreneurial business.  However, the Nigerian Computer Dealer’s Business Association (CAPDAN) estimates that as much as 75 percent used computer equipment that makes its way to Nigeria is ‘junk’ and not economically reparable or resalable (Puckett, et al. 2005, 2).  Instead of ‘bridging the digital divide’ we are creating a ‘digital dump.’  Unsurprisingly, as a result of the influx of junk electronics, alongside the refurbishment and resale economies, others have turned to e-waste disposal.

Options to recycle e-waste in Nigeria are non-existent, instead, large quantities of junk electronics end up “gathering dust in warehouses or being dumped or burned near residences in empty lots, on roadsides and in swamps, creating serious health and environmental contamination from toxic lechates and smoke (Umesi 2008, 566).”  The lack of monitored formal dumping sites, or adequate lechate recovery systems has led most e-waste to be disposed of in open fire burning. This kind of low-temperature burn results in the releasing of many more pollutants into the local atmosphere, triggering asthma, respiratory infections, emphysema and cancer in local populations (Ibid, 569). The solitary incinerator located in Lagos is not designed for anything other than municipal refuse and is incapable of incinerating electronic waste.

As recommended by the GAO, EPA, States and various stakeholder groups, a growing voice in the American discourse is calling for the immediate ratification of the Basel Convention by the US senate.  As such, the US should adopt an accompanying national strategy for recycling of electronic waste.  Thought there are competing certification processes advocated by NGO stakeholders like BAN. Among the best is the eStewards program, which could serve as a model for national standards going forward.

The eStewards certification program requires a pledge to honor the Basel Convention principles (no export of hazardous waste from wealthy to poorer countries) and not to use prison labor.  The standard is accredited through the American National Standards Institute and the American Society for Quality (ANSI-ASQ) National Accreditation board.  Currently about 50 recyclers are in the program, including some with Fortune 500 company clients, with another 20 in the process of becoming certified.

Adopted before the Basel Convention, this little known and never enforced decision is legally binding to all OECD states (including the USA) makes the following illegal:

• Any export of hazardous waste to or through a non-OECD member state without the consent of that country or the prior notification of a transit state
• Any export of hazardous waste to a no- OECD member state unless the receiving facility is considered adequate

Legally binding, this, if enforced, would be a measurement to hold the US and all other OECD states accountable for their transboundary shipments of e-waste.  It would serve as a stick to help bring the US to the table in complying with global attitudes toward hazardous waste.

Statistics on the global trade of e-waste are difficult to tabulate for a variety of reasons.  Countries are reluctant to disclose their net export numbers because to do so could demonstrate the growing problem that e-waste presents.  The way e-waste is currently shipped, it is impossible to tell junk from brand new electronics under the Harmonized Tariff System (HTS).  The HTS includes nearly 8,000 product categories which are used to identify traded goods.  These categories allow ports and governments to discern bananas from automobiles, however there is no product category for electronic waste.  When e-waste is shipped, it is most often under the category for new computers and electronics, thereby completely voiding any opportunity for accurate statistical knowledge of the amount of e-waste shipped worldwide (Puckett, et al. 2005, 8).

Creating separate and distinct categories for both e-waste and electronics being shipped for refurbishment and reuse would return the onus to exporting countries to accurately represent the items being shipped overseas.  It would require that countries discern between ‘junk’ electronics and those that have the capacity to be reused.  This would also facilitate accurate reportage of illegal shipments received by importing countries, and allow for tracking of violations globally.

The millions of tons of electronics that have found themselves in landfills can never be taken back.  The hazardous materials they contain have, and will continue to do their damage to the environment and human health.  In seeking to avoid a perpetual cycle of toxic pollution both in developed and developing societies, the Basel Convention has sought to bring the principles of responsibility for such pollution back to their production sources.  Containing the e-waste solution within national borders will force the discussion about end of life electronics, and force both the producer and consumer to assess their role in the process.

Though it isn’t possible to reclaim the electronics we’ve already thrown away, it is possible to harness the same ingenuity and creativity in making a less hazardous product in the future.  In order to do so, the political climate in the largest consuming economy on earth must be on board.  Without accountability for the e-waste generated in the United States, the hand of companies will not be forced to make a change.  Adopting the policy recommendations made within this document will be the first steps in reclaiming accountability for the transboundary movement of hazardous waste from richer to poorer countries.  And in the process, could jump-start an entirely new, greener electronics sector.

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