Op-Ed: E-waste, the poisonous monster following the trail of the new media

What’s really irritating about this is that one of the basic principles of industrial design is “No waste products”. Electronic recycling has been around for years, even the nasty things like cadmium and mercury can be reclaimed, but naturally, nobody’s doing anything systematically. That would be too much like knowing what they’re doing, which as far as I can figure out, is illegal, somewhere, according to somebody. And, of course, what is being done has to do some damage to somebody, on principle, apparently. TIME Magazine:

The U.S. is by far the world's top producer of e-waste, but much of it ends up elsewhere — specifically, in developing nations like China, India and Nigeria, to which rich countries have been shipping garbage for years. There the poor, often including children, dismantle dumped PCs and phones, stripping the components for the valuable — and toxic — metals contained inside.

All completely avoidable, except in El Cheapo Paradise, where the brains of most industrial planners seem to reside.

… In the cities like the southern Chinese town of Guiyu, they work with little protection, melting down components and breathing in poisonous fumes. What can't be recycled is simply dumped, turning already poisoned rivers into toxic sludge. It's all done in the hope of earning a few dollars from the detritus of the clean digital economy.

Heard this one before? No clue about how to do this rationally, no clue about not needing to send it halfway around the world to be recycled inefficiently, just the standard “out of mind out of sight” approach. “Out of mind” is right. Anyone, with more than primary school education, knows that practically anything can be safely, and efficiently, recycled. Anyone, that is, except know-nothing corporate eunuchs with the brains of emotionally unfulfilled insect vomit. The rest of the global cranium isn’t functioning too well, either:

Officially, this shouldn't be happening. The Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal was established by the UN in 1989 to control the hazardous garbage flowing from rich countries to poor ones. The convention allows countries to unilaterally ban the import of waste, and requires exporters to get the consent of destination countries before they send trash abroad. But the United States, a prime source of e-waste and other toxic waste, never signed onto the treaty, leaving it weakened, and some of the destination nations — most prominently China — quietly allow the dumping to continue, for the money it brings in.

If anyone had a dollar for the number of international treaties which aren’t simply ignored, they’d have died of starvation in about 1946. With all due respect to officials, politicians and their hangers-on who don’t know a damn thing about the sectors they’re supposed to be administering, (which is precisely no respect at all), a dead sheep could have done a better job than this. Nor, apparently, does the vast collection of media hacks seem to be any better informed. If it’s “over there”, it’s not news, because some geek said so on his talkback show. End of issue. About 20 years from now, when the planet is piled high with toxic electronic waste, we’ll have the same situation: “Problem? What problem?” TIME points out that some companies, notably Dell and Apple, have done a bit to reduce the impact. But the real issue isn’t clarified. There’s no need, at all, for any toxic e-waste to go anywhere. All you have to do is just stick another bin out every week, and not let people jack up the cost on you. A child could do it. Apparently this society is incapable of even attempting it.