There are several different ways to dispose of E-Waste, some are positive, some are not

-Proper Disposal Methods:

-TAKE-BACK (companies take-back their product after their use by consumers to reuse/recycle the materials)

-Recycling usable materials with living wages and under healthy working conditions.

Improper Disposal Methods:

-Landfills/incinerators

-Prison e-waste operations

-Exportation to ‘developing’ countries

IN MOST STATES, it’s still legal to dispose of e-waste from households and small quantity waste generators in landfills despite its known toxicity. Other jurisdictions choose to incinerate their e-waste. Many of the toxic elements in e-waste, such as mercury, lead, and beryllium, are immortal. They do not decompose, but simply take on another form when incinerated. For example, mercury - when exposed to high temperatures - becomes a vapor, allowing it to travel far distances as an airborne pollutant.

MEANWHILE, computer waste has some valuable materials such as copper, precious metals, and aluminum, but there is generally not enough value to profitably disassemble and recycle them paying US wages and providing adequate worker protection from the toxins. Unfortunately, this is why “recycled” e-waste from the US is frequently exported to developing countries, where wages and worker protection are at a minimum. It also explains why US prisoners disassemble a signiÄcant portion of the e-waste that is “recycled” in the US. Relying on relatively cheap solutions such as export, prison operations, and landfilling of our hazardous electronic waste means the US has little incentive to effectively address its large-volume hazardous waste problem. For more information visit, www.computertakeback.com

E-WASTE IN PRISONS...
The US allows state and federal prisoners to dismantle its toxic e-waste because the labor force is willing and cheap. While prisoners have a right and a need to learn new skills while incarcerated, dismantling a significant portion of the nation’s toxic electronic waste is, like export, one more way that the US externalizes the real costs of hazardous waste management to disadvantaged populations. Prisoners are not allowed to form unions, and because they are not considered employees, they are not protected under the same laws as private-sector workers. In some prisons, inmates have reported that they have been subjected to hazardous materials and working conditions with inadequate personal protection, equipment, and training for safely dealing with toxic waste. To make matters worse, one prison e-waste system has publicly stated that they export some of the e-waste from their facilities. Both prison operations and exports undermine the development of adequate recycling infrastructure in this country by undercutting private-sector recyclers who pay living wages, provide OSHA oversight for worker protection, and allow for redress in the case of violations. By sending our e-waste to prison operations, the US is postponing the day when we address our hazardous e-waste problem directly—as in Europe—by including recycling and other end-of-life costs into the price of a new product, thereby providing manufacturers with a direct economic incentive to lower toxic inputs and design products for longevity, upgradeability, recycled-material content, and easier recyclability.

GLOBAL DUMPING GROUNDS
Countries like China, Pakistan, and India are already receiving massive amounts of American E-waste. There the waste is “recycled” using archaic processes that are extremely harmful to both humans and the environment. As documented in the report “Exporting Harm”, Guiyu, in the Guangdong Province northeast of Hong Kong, is one region where electronic waste from many developed nations is “recycled.” In four neighboring villages, about 100,000 mostly migrant workers can be found dismantling cathode ray tubes, printers, and circuit boards, earning an average of $1.50 per day. Living and working around visible and invisible toxins, and lacking resources and information to prevent severe health and environmental consequences, men, women and children openly burn plastics and wires, melt and burn circuit boards, break and dump lead-filled cathode ray tubes, and conduct riverbank acid operations to extract gold. Electronic waste and the residues from the “recycling” are dumped into local rivers and surrounding land, posing extreme environmental and human health risks. Regional wells are no longer usable because of groundwater contamination. One river water sample produced lead levels 2,400 times higher than the World Health Organization’s maximum levels for drinking water. Now that China has begun to crack down on importing the globe’s hazardous waste, it is expected that because the US government does not control its e-waste exports, e-waste from the US and other developed nations will simply migrate more and more to other destinations.  In fact, this has already begun to occur, in India, Pakistan, the Philippines, Vietnam, Romania, and Bulgaria. For more information see "Exporting Harm" by the Basel Action Network at http://ban.org/#exportingharmfilm.

To learn about more ethical disposal methods click here.

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