Electronic waste (e-waste) is a rapidly developing environmental problem particularly for the most

developed countries. There are technological solutions for processing it, but these are costly, and the
cheaper option for most developed countries has been to export most of the waste to less developed
countries. There are various laws and policies for regulating the processing of e-waste at different
governance scales such as the international Basel Convention, the regional Bamoko Convention, and
various national laws. However, many of the regulations are not fully implemented and there is
substantial financial pressure to maintain the jobs created for processing e-waste. Mexico, Brazil,
Ghana Nigeria, India, and China have been selected for a more detailed study of the transboundary
movements of e-waste. This includes a systematic review of existing literature, the application of the
Driver, Pressure, State, Impact, Response (DPSIR) framework for analysing complex problems
associated with social ecological systems, and the application of the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) for
evaluating the environmental impact of electronic devices from their manufacture through to their final
disposal. Japan, Italy, Switzerland, and Norway have been selected for the LCA to show how e-waste
is diverted to developing countries, as there is not sufficient data available for the assessment from
the selected developing countries. GOOD, BAD and UGLY outcomes have been identified from this
study: the GOOD is the creation of jobs and the use of e-waste as a source of raw materials; the BAD
is the exacerbation of the already poor environmental conditions in developing countries; the UGLY is
the negative impact on the health of workers processing e-waste due to a wide range of toxic
components in this waste. There are a number of management options that are available to reduce
the impact of the BAD and the UGLY, such as adopting the concept of a circular economy, urban
mining, reducing loopholes and improving existing policies and regulations, as well as reducing the
disparity in income between the top and bottom of the management hierarchy for e-waste disposal.
The overarching message is a request for developed countries to help developing countries in the
fight against e-waste, rather than exporting their environmental problems to these poorer regions.

Effective and binding action is urgently required to protect the millions of children,
adolescents and expectant mothers worldwide whose health is jeopardized by the
informal processing of discarded electrical or electronic devices according to a new
ground-breaking report from the World Health Organization: Children and Digital
Dumpsites.

“With mounting volumes of production and disposal, the world faces what one recent
international forum described as a mounting “tsunami of e-waste”, putting lives and
health at risk.” said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General. "In
the same way the world has rallied to protect the seas and their ecosystems from
plastic and microplastic pollution, we need to rally to protect our most valuable
resource –the health of our children – from the growing threat of e-waste.”

As many as 12.9 million women are working in the informal waste sector, which
potentially exposes them to toxic e-waste and puts them and their unborn children at
risk.

Meanwhile more than 18 million children and adolescents, some as young as 5

years of age, are actively engaged in the informal industrial sector, of which waste
processing is a sub-sector. Children are often engaged by parents or caregivers in e-
waste recycling because their small hands are more dexterous than those of adults.
Other children live, go to school and play near e-waste recycling centres where high
levels of toxic chemicals, mostly lead and mercury, can damage their intellectual
abilities 

Children exposed to e-waste are particularly vulnerable to the toxic chemicals they
contain due to their smaller size, less developed organs and rapid rate of growth and
development. They absorb more pollutants relative to their size and are less able to
metabolize or eradicate toxic substances from their bodies.

Impact of e-waste on human health

Workers, aiming to recover valuable materials such as copper and gold, are at risk of
exposure to over 1,000 harmful substances, including lead, mercury, nickel,
brominated flame retardants and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs).

For an expectant mother, exposure to toxic e-waste can affect the health and
development of her unborn child for the rest of its life. Potential adverse health
effects include negative birth outcomes, such as stillbirth and premature births, as
well as low birth weight and length.  Exposure to lead from e-waste
recycling activities has been associated with significantly reduced neonatal
behavioural neurological assessment scores, increased rates of attention
deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), behavioural problems, changes in child
temperament, sensory integration difficulties, and reduced cognitive and language
scores.

Other adverse child health impacts linked to e-waste include changes in lung
function, respiratory and respiratory effects, DNA damage, impaired thyroid function
and increased risk of some chronic diseases later in life, such as cancer and
cardiovascular disease.

“A child who eats just one chicken egg from Agbogbloshie, a waste site in Ghana,
will absorb 220 times the European Food Safety Authority daily limit for intake of
chlorinated dioxins,” said Marie-Noel Brune Drisse, the lead WHO author on the
report. “Improper e-waste management is the cause.  This is a rising issue that many
countries do not recognize yet as a health problem. If they do not act now, its
impacts will have a devastating health effect on children and lay a heavy burden on
the health sector in the years to come.” 
A rapidly escalating problem
E-waste volumes are surging globally. According to the Global E-waste Statistics
Partnership (GESP), they grew by 21% in the five years up to 2019, when 53.6
million metric tonnes of e-waste were generated.  For perspective, last year’s e-
waste weighed as much as 350 cruise ships placed end to end to form a line 125km
long. This growth is projected to continue as the use of computers, mobile phones
and other electronics continues to expand, alongside their rapid obsolescence. 

Only 17.4% of e-waste produced in 2019 reached formal management or recycling

facilities, according to the most recent GESP estimates, the rest was illegally
dumped, overwhelmingly in low- or middle-income countries, where it is recycled by
informal workers.

Appropriate collection and recycling of e-waste is key to protect the environment and
reduce climate emissions. In 2019, the GESP found that the 17.4% of e-waste that
was collected and appropriately recycled prevented as much as 15 million tonnes of
carbon dioxide equivalents from being released into the environment.

A recent study in the us shows that by 2004, over 315 million computers will
become obsolete. By 2005, for every single computer an American buys, one will
be discarded. California alone discards more than 6,000 computers daily. In
Europe the volume of e-waste is increasing by 3-5 per cent per annum, almost
three times faster than the growth in municipal solid waste.

So should we panic? The standard answer is: the problem of e-waste is limited to
the industrialised world, so India and other developing countries needn't worry. But
reality dictates we need to worry, for two reasons. Firstly, India is a major presence
in the it world. In 1995-2000, the Indian it industry recorded a compounded annual
growth rate of more than 42.4 per cent. Indians use at present about 12 million pcs,
13 million mobile phones and 70 million televisions. Soon, these goods will enter
the waste stream. Already, close to 1.38 million pcs become obsolete in India
annually, and manufacturers and assemblers alone are creating about 1,050 tonnes
of electronic scrap every year.

Secondly, most pcs trashed in the industrialised world find their way into our
backyards, as 'recycling' or 'donation'. Hence, we face a double burden: managing
home-grown e-waste, and 'recycling' someone else's junk! Reports such
as Exporting Harm: The High-Tech Trashing of Asia by the Basel Action Network
(ban) clearly show how the illegal export trade in e-waste considers India, Pakistan
and China the all time favourite destination.

e-waste is a problem both at the manufacturer's end, and at the user level.
Computers are not designed per se for recycling. For instance, the new pcs have
most operations in-built, which means the hard disk cannot be upgraded. Points out
a 2003 report by Toxics Link, Scraping the Hi-Tech Myth, Computer Waste in
India, 'the it sector moves according to Moore's law, whereby the chip processing
power doubles every 18 months. Due to this rapid advancement, the average
computer life span has shrunk to less than two years'. As new technologically
improved models hit the market, more e-waste is generated.

Manufacturers also fail to take responsibility for their product. Once the product is
sold, disposal becomes the consumer/user's headache. In some industrialised
countries, manufacturers run recycling programmes, but of dubious efficacy. Points
out the ban report: 'around 80 per cent of what is diverted to recycling (in the us) is
actually exported to Asia'. The us government has no idea how much e-waste is
exported from their territory or where it goes, adds the report.

e-waste management is poor. While most of it is 'recycled', the rest ends up in

landfills, where it becomes a 'conglomeration of plastic and steel casings, circuit
boards, glass tubes, wires, resistors, capacitors, and other assorted parts'.
The ban report says about 70 per cent of heavy metals found in landfills come from
electronic discards, which contaminate the groundwater. e-waste is also
incinerated, leading to hazardous emissions. For instance, copper commonly found
in e-waste acts as a catalyst for dioxin formation.

But the chief means of managing e-waste is export to poor nations for 'recycling'
because the labour cost there is low, and environmental and occupational
regulations weak. A pilot project conducted by the United States Environmental
Protection Agency (usepa) estimated it was 10 times cheaper to ship crt monitors
to China than it was to recycle them in the us. Guiya, in the greater Guangdong
Province of China, is an infamous e-waste recycling spot. ban carried out a survey
of this area, and reported the soil and water there were heavily contaminated.

Similar surveys were carried out in New Delhi (Mandoli, Sadar Bazar, Kanti Nagar
Extension, Old Sealampur and Turkmangate). It was found that Indian e-waste
dealers make bids on sea-going containers at the inland depot situated at Okhla,
New Delhi. The material is then taken out, sorted and distributed between various
recyclers. Some components (such as ic chips) are sent for re-use. Others that
cannot be re-used are sent for open burning, to extract metals like copper. pvc-
coated cables are openly burnt. Nitric acid is also used to remove gold and
platinum. Both open burning and acid-baths lead to occupational exposure to
pollutants, and jeopardise the health of nearby communities. Very often children
are employed to carry out these operations. Exposure to pollutants from e-waste
has been linked with various health problems -- silicosis, respiratory irritation and
pulmonary oedema.

There are regulations on e-waste trade, but toothless ones. On a larger scale, there
is The Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of
Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal, which was adopted in March 1989, to check
trade in hazardous waste. As of June 2003, only 37 countries have ratified the
convention, but for it to come into force at least 62 ratifications are required. Some
of the big generators of e-waste, like the us, have not ratified the convention. So
they can freely export their waste. In India, we have the Hazardous Waste
(Management and Handling) Rules, 1989. But schedule-i of this law does not
cover e-waste.

Some countries are putting in stricter regulations to check trade in e-waste. Says D
B Boralkar, additional secretary with the Central Pollution Control Board, "In
Australia, a permit is required for all export and import of waste electrical and
electronic assemblies or scrap (unless they are free from hazardous constituents).
Switzerland has introduced an ordinance on the return, take back and disposal of
electrical and electronic appliances. The European Union also introduced a
directive in January 2003 on the restriction of the use of certain hazardous
substances in electronic goods." Interestingly, the us refuses to put in place such
regulations. For instance, circuit boards destined for recycling are considered scrap
metal and therefore exempt from regulation under their Resource Recovery and
Conservation Act. A senior official of the Union ministry of environment and
forests explains the problem, "We can define something as hazardous and ban its
trade, but what can we do if the largest generator of e-waste (read: us) refuses to
label it as hazardous and continues its export?"

The solution remains making products eco-friendly. Many companies are now
manufacturing electronic goods sans hazardous elements. The eu is also restricting
use of such hazardous components in pcs. The challenge for India is to learn from
these experiments.

The city's many technology clusters and multinational companies are pitching in to help Bengaluru manage its waste,
making conscious efforts to recycle nearly all of what they generate.The efforts begin with waste segregation -and
particularly convincing employees of its importance.

“For an office campus to go `zero waste', the change can be quick and take less than three months if there is a concerted
effort,“ said Lakshmi Menon, head of client relationships at Hasiru Dala Innovation ..

Read more at:

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/miscellaneous/tech-companies-mncs-strive-to-recycle-the-waste-
they-generate/articleshow/59013288.cms?
utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst