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.