E-Waste Offers an Economic Opportunity as Well as Toxicity

The police raid on a junkyard on the outskirts of Bangkok had all the trappings of a drug bust. Swarming onto the open-air property in late May, officers from the Royal Thai Police found undocumented workers from Laos and Myanmar engaged in dangerous work that exposed them to blasts of toxic fumes and dust — a common hazard on the lowest rung of their illegal and booming international trade. The products these workers handled, however, were not heroin or methamphetamines but vast piles of discarded computers, electrical wires and circuit boards. And it’s very likely that much of this electronic waste came from one of the world’s biggest producers: the United States.

E-waste has become the world’s fastest-growing trash stream. For all of us who have discarded a phone or computer for a newer, sleeker model, the reasons are hardly a mystery. Still, the growth is staggering: The worldwide accumulation of e-waste has more than doubled in the last nine years. In 2016, according to the United Nations University, a global think tank that tracks the problem, the yearly accumulation reached 49.3 million tons — enough to fill more than a million 18-wheel trucks stretching from New York to Bangkok and back. By 2021, the annual total is predicted to surpass 57 million tons.

The explosion of e-waste highlights its dual (and dueling) identities as both environmental scourge and potential economic resource. Though often laced with lead, mercury or other toxic substances, laptops and phones also contain valuable elements like gold, silver and copper. Yet barely 20 percent of the world’s e-waste is collected and delivered to formal recyclers. The fate of the rest is largely unknown. Only 41 nations compile e-waste statistics, and their partial data can’t keep up with the expansion of electronic devices into so many consumer categories — toys and toilets, watches and refrigerators. In the United States, which generated an estimated 6.9 million tons of e-waste in 2016 (42 pounds per person), most e-waste probably goes straight into the trash. By one account, e-waste makes up just 2 percent of the total volume in American landfills — but more than two-thirds of heavy metals.

Despite being the world’s second-largest producer — China recently claimed the top spot — the United States is the only developed country that hasn’t ratified the Basel Convention on hazardous waste, a treaty that restricts the exports of e-waste and that has the support of 186 parties. Moreover, the United States has no national law for managing e-waste, leaving the issue to the states. (Fifteen states still have no e-waste legislation in effect.) The European Union, by contrast, has some of the toughest enforcement of e-waste laws in the world, banning exports to developing countries and compelling manufacturers to help fund recycling. Europe’s recycling rates for electronics — around 35 percent overall — are much higher than the American rate. “The U.S. has always been the elephant in room that nobody wants to talk about,” says Deepali Sinha Khetriwal, a Mumbai-based research associate at the United Nations University. “Until it decides to play a part, we can’t really solve the problem of e-waste shipments.”

A significant but ultimately unquantified portion of American e-waste is quietly exported, mostly to Asia. Until last year, China was handling an estimated 70 percent of the world’s processed e-waste. In January, Beijing imposed a sweeping ban on the import of e-waste as part of its “National Sword” campaign to slash the levels of what it calls “foreign garbage.” Though spurred by environmental concerns — rivers choked with toxic chemicals, local children with high levels of lead in their blood — Beijing’s move also seems emblematic of its increasing self-sufficiency and growing rejection of the West. The ban has caused upheaval in the global trade in e-waste, diverting huge amounts to smaller nations ill equipped to handle the overflow.