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From My Home to Yours

Where e-waste goes and what it does once it gets there

Reality Show by Fredo de Luna

Like me, you’ve probably never wondered past the pleasures you’ve taken out of your everyday “smart” objects or devices. They bring us the ability to experience life on an otherwise unimaginable scale. We experience joy, laughter, sadness, and an emotional rollercoaster of in between emotions with friends, family, strangers, or just our lonesome. The best part of enjoying our products is knowing that something “better, faster, smarter, thinner” is just around the corner waiting to be unearthed to the general population with the latest and greatest packed into a compact platform. Stop me if you’ve heard this one already but, “This is our best…ever made”.

Usually, that’s all it takes to immediately want to discard your current devices; not that you need to have it, but you want to have the latest desirable product on the market. Trends can be dangerous in more ways that are less obvious. To put this into perspective for you consider this; “In every 1 million recycled cell phones, 35,274 lbs. of copper, 772 lbs. of silver,75 lbs. of gold, and 33 lbs. of palladium can be recovered.” [2] That is a lot of precious metals! Yet “In 2016 roughlyonly 20% of global waste was collected and properly recycled” [2]. Which begs the following question. Have you ever stopped and ask yourself what happens once you decide your old smartphone or electronic devices are no longer worth keeping?

For those of us living in First World nations such as Canada, The United States, Japan, The European Union (to name a few) this is more of an afterthought than anything else. For all we know, we have a recycling program where our waste is collected and disposed of accordingly. Heck, once it’s in the trash it’s really not your problem; you’re doing your part to save the environment one sorting bin at a time and for that, you deserve a pat on the back. Or do you?

Do you really know what happens to your e-waste? Well, let me explain what happens to your e-waste. At some point your e-waste will journey from your home to a recycling facility, eventually, the more troublesome components that are too difficult to breakdown are exported from your country and imported into developing nation such as West Africa, India, China, Vietnam, or The Philippines (to name a few). Why has my garbage ended up on the other side of the world and what is it doing there you may ask? Well, in short, developing nations are paid to import your e-waste. There is typically an agreement in place between developed nations so that they can continue to send their garbage elsewhere instead of keeping the majority of it within their own borders. What happens next takes place at various landfill sites in these developing nations.

Firstly, there is a process coined informal recycling. This is a term that is used to describe manual (usually hard) labour whereas marginal groups are used to further break down these products or otherwise mine for precious metals such as gold or silver. The conditions are less than ideal and do an extenuating amount of harm to the local and external ecosystems in neighbouring communities, towns, cities, or even other countries. The damage occurs in many different instances which upset the delicate balance of the environment.

Environmental Disaster by Alex Proimos (CC-BY-NC 2.0)

Let's take a closer look at air pollution in the atmosphere. This typically occurs when open-air burning is used to separate precious metals instead of a more refined process like an incinerator. These heavy metals such as mercury, beryllium, lead, cadmium, arsenic, and brominated flame retardants are extremely toxic. From this process, alone harmful particulates are released into the atmosphere which is carried by the wind into neighbouring ecosystems the results for which are more clear long term similar to the immediate effects on the individuals involved in this process.

The workers involved in these hazardous conditions are typically the first ones to be impacted directly through the absorption of heavy metals into their bodies via dioxins or persistent environmental pollutants (POP). A study concluded, “humans working with, and around electronic waste showed elevated blood levels of metals” [1] similar to the ones mentioned earlier. This is very unfortunate as the majority of these individuals who have had direct exposure to these toxins will develop long term illnesses such as cancer, organ damage, neurological damage digestive problems, bone issues and respiratory ailments. Also, with the accelerated output of dioxins into the air young mothers without the appropriate level of access to medical care can develop a build-up of dioxins in their breast milk which in turn is passed on to infants via breastfeeding. This is a cascading effect as the amount passed on usually exceeds The World Health Organization (WHO) tolerance for young infants affecting many future generations to come with similar ailments. You should know “dioxins accumulate in human bodies for roughly 7-11 years”.[4]

So now that you understand better how the labourers are affected let's dig further to see what happens when these toxins from e-waste are not properly contained and leach into the soil. The obvious result here is the “soil-crop food pathway” [2]is contaminated. Once the soil has been corrupted with heavy metals the crops are also essentially poisoned. This disrupts their agricultural production as the once nitrate rich farmlands become desolate and baron. Food yield is impacted not just for the human population but the animal ones as well.

Furthermore, to the soil being the tipping point let’s continue to burrow down and see the effect on groundwater. The obvious conclusion here is that it becomes contaminated with heavy metals too, which can leak out into nearby streams, ponds, lakes and rivers to do further harm. The water essentially becomes toxic, the inhabitants of those ecosystems develop higher levels of toxicity which means any fish or aquatic organisms become dangerous to consume

Water Pollution in China by Bert Van Dijk (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

So, as you can see from my home to yours there is a series of very precise actions that result in the perpetuation of instability as a result of how e-waste is exported to offshore developing nations. In our next post, we will more closely explore the limiting factors that impact the ecosystem further. In the meantime, if you would like to learn more about this growing concern the BBC has written an excellent article worth exploring.

Sources:

Hunt, A., Bailey, M., Buglioni, M. B., & Berry, M. (2018, April 28). The story of Canada's digital dumping ground. The story of Canada's digital dumping ground | Open Case Studies. https://cases.open.ubc.ca/w17t2cons200-26/.

Leahy, M. (2020, December 15). [web log]. https://www.rubicon.com/blog/electronic-waste-problem/.

McAllister, L. (2013, April 4). The Human and Environmental Effects of E-Waste. PRB. https://www.prb.org/resources/the-human-and-environmental-effects-of-e-waste/.

World Health Organization. (2016, October 14). Dioxins and their effects on human health. World Health Organization. https://www.who.int/en/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/dioxins-and-their-effects-on-human-health.

Mahy, E. (2020, February 17). Can we fix our way out of the growing e-waste problem? BBC News. https://www.bbc.com/news/business-51385344

Gutberlet, Jutta. (2018). What is Informal Recycling?. 10.13140/RG.2.2.19094.65606. Task Group Informal Recycling: Brochure on informal recycling