In 2010 the population of the US managed to throw out fifty-one million nine hundred thousand computers, over the same period one hundred and fifty-two million mobile devices were discarded. These numbers may seem (and are) staggering but what is more worrying is that they had increased 9.5% and 7.8% respectively from just the year before. Our wasted electronics (e-waste) are becoming a problem—sure, e-waste may now only represent 2% of the US’s total waste, but they represent 70% of its toxic waste.
Humanity as a whole produced 49 million of tonnes of e-waste in 2012 and that number is expected to grow to 65.4 million tonnes by 2017. If we look at the by-country breakdown of these statistics we see the US as the largest gross contributor with 9.9 million tonnes, China in second with 7.3 million tonnes. However, gross statistics in this context are rather misleading- per capita statistics really illustrate the problem. The USA produces 31.7 kilograms of e-waste per capita every year, Canada 28.59, the UK 26.41, Japan 26.14. China? Just 5.4 kilograms per person. Now if China were to be consuming per capita at the levels of the aforementioned nations imagine the pile of waste— indeed, global e-waste volume is expected to grow 8% every year, there are no signs of this growth abating.
Governments as a whole have been responding to the problem of electronic waste: various different programs have been developed in order to ensure a higher percentage of waste is recycled, e.g., Japan recycles 75% of its e-waste. It is certainly important for us to advocate for those solutions. Recycling, however, does not magically make consumption sustainable— the act of recycling still produces GHGs; parts of electronics are still thrown out or burned, often producing toxic fumes. Many of these electronics contain non-renewable resources that could be employed elsewhere: by definition, recycling will not reclaim 100% of these resources— it is not yet that efficient and is unlikely to ever be that efficient. Furthermore, regulations often just outsource the same problems to nations without robust enough institutions or without the political will to prevent the e-waste flooding in. The Agbogbloshie dumpsite near Accra, Ghana and Guiyu, China are perfect examples of the scale of international e-waste transportation. If we wish to effectively solve this problem we need to stop looking for solutions to problems after we cause them, and we need to start reducing the problems we cause, viz., by looking at our high consumption of these goods rather than at recycling them after-the-fact.
This leads us to the question of what has caused our consumption to increase at such a rate over the past few decades. The obvious answer is the rise of computers in everyday life: iPods, smart phones, laptops, and tablets have become ubiquitous for the OECD middle classes- technology we were using in the early 2000’s is laughably obsolete these days. It may seem that our growing production of e-waste is an inevitable consequence of accelerating technological progress. This is not necessarily the case when you think about how many of these industries function— and how they potentially could. Sure, the difference between a computer running windows 1998 and a laptop right now is huge, but that was not the purchasing path of a computer owner. Instead of large jumps, we have been made to purchase incrementally-better products. A key consideration here is that these devices are not globally better each time— battery technology has not made nearly the advances that microprocessor technology has. However, to access these improvements, electronics businesses generally require the consumer to purchase a whole new unit, even if the changes are only to a specific feature.
Often companies already have the update lined up before they have started marketing the soon-to-be obsolete model. The climate (and our wallets) are the victims of planned obsolescence, making us consume vastly more resources for little additional benefit. The question we should ask ourselves before we ‘upgrade’is not “is this new device better than my old one”but “is the improvement worth the price?”
We don’t always have that latitude- our electronics are often designed to break ; repairing a computer or phone is often more expensive than just buying a new one. It may not be possible to make electronics that never break, but it is possible to make them easier to repair and cheaper to repair. Here the industries that produce these electronics have a clear role to play.
We need a system whereby we can upgrade our electronics without consuming double the resources every time: if the hard drive is better, all you need is a new hard-drive— not a whole new computer. Fully customizable, easily repairable electronics- companies like phoneblocks seem to be leading the way on this. However, they need our support as consumers to make headway with the few firms that dominate the tech industry. We need durable goods because we cannot keep making disproportionate demands on our world’s resources. Our waste is poisoning people, our waste is destroying the ecosystems and our waste is sucking the earth dry of resources that people outside of high income countries and future generations might really want to use some day. We need to rethink how we consume.
By Nathaniel McKenzie
http://www.electronicstakeback.com/wp-content/uploads/Facts_and_Figures_on_EWaste_and_Recycling.pdf
http://step-initiative.org/index.php/WorldMap.html
http://www.greenpeace.org/international/PageFiles/25134/recycling-of-electronic-waste.pdf
http://www.epa.gov/epawaste/conserve/materials/ecycling/manage.htm
