In 1986, the Khian Sea, a cargo ship, was loaded with some 14,000 tons of toxic incinerator ash in Philadelphia and sent to the Bahamas to dispose of it. They were turned away by many islands until the Haitian government issued a permit after the Khian Sea deceived the Haitians telling them the ash was a useful fertilizer. Greenpeace alerted the Haitian government after the Khian Sea had placed several tons of ash on the beach. The government revoked the permit and ordered the removal of the ash. The ship, however, disappeared in the night, leaving behind several tons of toxic ash that remains on a Haitian beach today. It is largely believed that the remainder of the ash was dumped in the Indian Ocean.
This tragic, and all too common event, led to the creation of the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal (Basel Convention), in 1989. Like many other international treaties, it was designed with substantial input from the U.S. government, in this case, the Reagan Administration. And like other treaties, it remains on the shelf in the U.S. Congress, because while it has been signed, Congress has failed to ratify it by properly amending our domestic hazardous waste laws, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA). Representatives Greene and Thompson recently introduced legislation that would allow ratification. Further, EPA Administrator, Lisa Jackson, has listed "cleaning up e-waste" as a top priority.
However, while the Basel Convention has been ratified by over 170 countries, the U.S. is in the company of Haiti and Afghanistan as the only countries that have failed to ratify. The Convention controls the trade of hazardous waste from more developed to less developed countries. So while most of the world has made great strides in keeping hazardous waste from being dumped on countries that are desperate and unable to safely process the waste, the United States has moved from dumping ash on countries to dumping electronic waste on them.In 2007, the EPA estimated that the United States generated over 3 million tons of e-waste. Where do our computers, cell phones and monitors go when we throw them out or donate them? The scary truth is that many times they are thrown on a cargo ship like the Khian Sea and sent to a developing nation. There, workers, including children, are exposed to toxic chemicals as the electronics are burned in open pits or placed in acid baths to separate the metals. This exposure leads to organ and nerve damage in local workers and is devastating to the surrounding environment. With cheap labor and lax environmental regulations these developing nations find it worthwhile to mine the waste for valuable substances.
E-waste is the fastest growing waste stream in the United States and there is currently no framework to oversee its safe disposal. Corporations are not held accountable for their unsustainable production of electronics. Technology is loaded with hazardous substances and becomes obsolete to the point that it is less expensive to buy a new device than to repair the old. The corporations then bear no responsibility when the electronic must be disposed of.
This issue is maddening (if you click on one link click on this one) and is indicative of systemic problems currently facing the U.S. First, somehow the corporate interests are overwhelming the common sense inclination to keep our country from pouring toxic waste on developing nations. An unregulated free market will dump toxic waste on starving orphans....and it is! Second, the U.S. Congress confuses making a free will decision to tackle international issues with international solutions with submitting to the will of "the international community" (how that became a dirty phrase in politics, I will never know). Judith Resnik, et al. recently tackled the same irrational fears regarding the Kyoto Protocol discussing the inability of any issue to be truly local or national or international in todays flat world. Politicians must reframe our role within the international community from a potential dangerous submission to merely voluntary cooperation and one of many checks on our "balanced" government.
Similar to regulating carbon, states, recently including New York, have taken the lead in attempting to regulate their disposal of e-waste. But these regulations are leading to an indecipherable web of inconsistent rules that no one can follow. It is time for common sense, sustainable solutions to overcome the corporate interest of putting a product in the consumers hands without bearing any responsibility for what's in it or where it ends up.
RCRA establishes regulations on treatment, storage, transport and disposal of hazardous waste but it only regulates industry. Congress must amend RCRA to encompass electronic waste from households and place the responsibility where is belongs, with those that set the wheel in motion, the corporations. Corporations must provide free recycling for electronic waste and be held accountable for their share of the electronic waste stream. Further, electronics contain lead, cadmium, mercury and other toxic metals and flame retardants that are unnecessary. These hazardous substances must be banned so that when a computer monitor somehow makes its way to a landfill it will not leach these substances into the environment. These substances are already banned in the EU, so it is possible. Finally, the Basel Convention must be ratified to assure that the developing world does not end up serving as a landfill for the developed world.
