Blog Here => CAW Mark Murray on EWaste
This calls for thorough commentary, but from my point of view the short answer is, yes, “race to the bottom” export is a challenge, and no, personal computers are the last thing that needs to added to an ARF style collection mechanism.
An announcement was made this week by Sony America and Waste Management Inc.
Sony Recycling Program web page
interesting..
Today’s online version of our local Bay Area paper, SFGate, features an article on the e-waste export morass, an historic set of purchasing and disposal guidelines enacted by UC Berkeley, and the obligatory quotes from BAN and leading Inidan action groups. SFGate EWaste Story LINK
The Associated Press has done their bit to keep the EWaste Debate alive today, releasing an overview article focusing on the basics. Of course, as a new entrant into a detailed topic, the writer makes a few gaffs:
The electronic carcasses are fed into a massive machine that noisily shreds them into tiny pieces and mechanically sorts the fragments into piles of steel, aluminum, plastic and precious metals. Those scraps are sent to smelting plants, mostly in the Sacramento area, where they are melted down for reuse.
Well, for those that don’t follow the debate, REUSE is exactly at the center of a lot of the unsolved dilemmas in the area. Hint: REUSE does not mean shredding and melting.
HP and Dell are rightly featured in the opening remarks, and the Roseville HP/Noranda (Falconbridge/XStrata) product recycling center serves as the backdrop for the rest of the exposition.
Barbara Kyle is quoted in her role as National Coordinator for the SVTC-spinoff Computer Takeback Campaign.
With the quote from CTC also comes the label activists, which also brings us to BAN. Sarah Westervelt, who among other things spoke so eloquently at the CA EPA hearings on EWaste in 2003, is quoted on the international waste side of this dirty industrial edeavor. The International Waste side which, despite the EPA’s recently-released and years-delayed CRT rule, has continued to be a source of WTO-sized contention amongst interested parties, well meanig or otherwise.
more companies are making their products energy efficient, using eco-friendly packaging and offsetting their carbon emissions to curb global warming. says the article, and, “This focus is good for business,” chimes in a Gartner analyst. Hey, I agree with that guy! or, more succinctly said, ‘not only are the opportunites there for gaining marketshare and further ingeniuos invention, but you can’t run a business if you eventually poison all of the inhabitants and use up its readily available raw materials!
e-waste is a growing environmental and public health concern as the world becomes more wired and companies introduce new products at a faster pace.
Oh yes, there is a lot more product where that came from. Consumer, business and government purchases of electronics are showing no sign of anything but increasing as new form factors, new functionality and new capabilities drive product growth. “Fastest growing segment of the waste stream’ is as true now as it was 10 years ago when the European Union’s initial analysis started the legislative ball rolling on this.
Gartner estimates that 133,000 PCs are discarded by U.S. homes and businesses each day. There’s a number for you. Wasteful? Unneccessary? Bad use of resources?
Only 10 to 15 percent of electronics are currently recycled, industry analysts say. The rest collects dust in people’s homes or gets dumped into municipal landfills, where environmentalists worry toxic chemicals can leak out. Oh yes, only environmentalists worry about nasty chemicals. Moms, EPA, responsible business people, average folks don’t worry about that, do they? Oh yes, and as I have said before, if everything really truly landed in a landfill as it was supposed to, then there would be less of a problem. But it doesn’t, its in our streets, and yards and empty lots, and actually, near your kitchen where you make your food every day.
The high percentage of all collected ewaste that is exported for processing is then mentioned. Yes, thats true. Thats a good thing, or its not, depending on who you ask — Thomas Friedman, or Sarah Westervelt, or even the World Reuse, Repair and Recycling Association.
Oops, here comes another gaff. California made it illegal to throw away nearly all electronic products last year, but the state doesn’t require manufacturers to take back their products. Instead, when consumers buy electronics, they pay fees to cover the cost of recycling those products later. Not quite accurate. I’ve written to a journalist or two on this common misconception. The CA Advance Recovery Fee only applies to a narrow range of CRT and LCD related products.
Back to Dell and HP, back to industry practices, goes the article, which then lands on CRTs as the final focus. Odd, and a little out of synch, but heck, better than silence.
While following up on some of the BodyBurden and Biomonitoring topics from last year, I found the National Environmental Public Health Conference.
The elections of Fall 2006 famously changed the balance of power in Congress. With those changes, US Senator Barbara Boxer, (D) CA has taken the chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. Last week, Senator Boxer exercised her new leadership in what amounted to a public grilling of the standing US EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson.
The previous EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman was apparently quoted recently regarding Johnson, “he may be allowed in the room sometimes when these decisions are being made, but basically, they come from the White House.” (EcoTalk Radio)
I don’t want to play politics. But the setbacks at the US EPA are too large to ignore. More on this as it develops.
U.S. Senate Panel Rakes EPA Chief Over the Coals
EPA Libraries Subject of Heated Hearing on Capitol Hill
In a somewhat related development, companion bills in the US House and Senate are being introduced to bring toxics reporting standards back up after tampering late last session.
A body of the European Union will vote today on a new solid waste strategy approved by committee last Fall.
UPDATE: the vote was in favor of the framework. ENS News article on Waste Hierarchy Vote
The vote will apparently lay the groundwork for an incentives and enforcement framework, based on an approach that has been articulated in previous EU Directives. The following is from “Strategy on the prevention and recycling of waste”
“The aim of the strategy is to reduce the negative impact on the environment that is caused by waste throughout its life-span, from production to disposal, via recycling. This approach means that every item of waste is seen not only as a source of pollution to be reduced, but also as a potential resource to be exploited.
The objectives of the Community legislation preceding the adoption of this strategy still apply, namely limiting waste, and promoting the re-use, recycling and recovery of waste. These objectives are integrated into the approach based on environmental impact and on the life-cycle of resources.”
This broad policy framework covers all consumer products, including consumer electronics and e-waste.
News Article on Committee Vote (from Food Services news)
EU Waste Policy Page
2006 EU Directive on Waste
European Environmental Bureau
In the biggest news of the new year, the Executive Office has declared that virtually all Federal purchasing of new IT equipment be compliant with the EPEAT standard. The U.S. Federal Government buys about 7% of the world’s computers.
Executive Order on EPEAT purchasing
The sweeping declaration includes major and substantial targets for renewable energy use, recycled paper content, vehicle fleet composition and management, and others.
While visiting here in Cambridge, MA, I had an unexpected opportunity to attend an evening presentation on One Laptop Per Child by Mr. Walter Bender, President of Software Development on the project.
The recent Consumer Electronics Show demonstrates plainly that there are more than enough individuals in the world who are perfectly capable of creating a massive industry glut of gadgets, with seemingly no thought to consequence, implication or of building responsible systems.
I was impressed by some of the aspirations of the One Laptop Per Child project, and can make a clear distinction between the OLPC designers and much of what passes for industry practice elsewhere.
However, like it or not, because this project is high profile, and particularly because the target audience is specifically young children, OLPC will rightly bear additional scrutiny by many, and in fact becomes a leader in the area. What is done in OLPC is an indication of what can and should be done elsewhere.
So it is all the more important that despite the bruising pressure on OLPC to scale and build quickly, that wise choices be made in the design of the physical materials, and in negotiating real answers to complete life cycle challenges.
It is not enough to just build a unique platform for learning, but the physical embodiment of it must genuinely address the challenges of our post-industrial age — the weight of invented products on the Earth and its Biosphere, and the effects of product chemistry introduced into the natural life cycle.
The CA Department of Toxic Substances Control has put into effect a partial implementation of the European ROHS Directive by listing devices covered under our SB20/SB50 system. (see sidebar for background links)
In seperate regulatory action, the list of Covered Devices in the SB20/50 system expanded to include DVD players with built-in screens larger than four inches diagonally.
The One Laptop Per Child project continues marching forward…
They are still claiming the $100 number, or someone is.. More questions are raised in my mind than answered. What is the real lifecycle cost of this machine? Where do the components go at end of life? What is reuseable? Where is the Design for Environment (DfE) piece of this puzzle ?
News
BBC News
Engadget Quip
Linux Today Story w/comments
Computerworld Australia Interview w/ OS Designer
Sites
The Children’s Laptop
OLPC News
Fedora Linux Speaks
Wikipedia Article
Essentially, ever more electronics being sold to consumers at all levels.
BEIJING, Nov. 25 (Xinhuanet) — Japanese electronics maker Sony has unleashed their latest line of Pocket Mini USB drives.
These thumb flash memory drives, in a range of vibrant colors, are some of the most fashionable storage devices on the market. They measure 14.5 x 32 x 2.7 millimeters and weigh 1.5 grams only.
The devices are directly compatible with USB 2.0 and have a capacity ranging from 256MB to 2GB.
Sony plans to put them on market on Dec. 1. The price for a 2 GB Pocket Mini is expected to be about 77 U.S. dollars.
<-EWaste LINK
