The New York Times has an article about e-waste: “Poor Nations Are Littered With Old PC's, Report Says.� What seems to be happening is that electronic products (PCs, monitors, cellphones, etc.) discarded in the United States and Europe are finding their way to dumps and landfills in third-world nations.
The report discussed in the story is out of the Basel Action Network – a group that “works to prevent the globalization of the toxic chemical crisis by challenging toxic trade from rich to poorer countries,� according to its website.
The authors of the report, "The Digital Dump: Exporting Re-Use and Abuse to Africa," took photos of the asset tags on the back of some of the discarded junk – the tag or sticker with the company name on it – and discovered that some of this equipment “was owned by private companies; city, state and federal governments (U.S. and worldwide); schools, hospitals.�
The other shoe, as you might expect, is that plenty of the PCs still had data on them.
It goes without saying that we have to have to discard electronics responsibly, and I think almost all of us do. The EPA has a site about its Plug-In To eCycling program; Dell holds computer recycling events; the National Christina Foundation works to train people through donated technology; even Oxfam takes donated computers for recycling. Do a Google search for computer recycling – there are hundreds of links.
So how did computers from the City of Houston, IBM or the Army Corps of Engineers end up in this dump? Presumably the equipment changed hands more than a few times since it left its original owners. In the report’s disclaimer, in fact, the authors say:
Information appearing on this chart does not mean that any wrongdoing or illegality has taken place. While the trade in used electronics appears to be progressing in an uncontrolled manner without due regard to international law, it is impossible to know if any of the equipment upon which these tags were placed was exported or managed in violation of any laws. While it is unlikely in our view, it is possible for example that the equipment found was exported fully functional, certified as such, was guaranteed to be sold only for reuse, and therefore would not have been subject to laws governing the transboundary movement of wastes.
No one wants to see his company or agency name on a electronic waste in a third-world land fill. What’s a responsible computer user/buyer/recycler to do?
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