Picking Through Trash: Finding a Good E-Waste Recycler
Not every recycling company is worthy of your e-waste. Up to 70-80% of the e-waste that is supposedly “recycled” is sent to developing countries, according to estimates by the anti-e-waste crusaders at Basel Action Network (BAN). In places such as Ghana, India, and China, poorly paid workers, sometimes children, sort and take apart the waste, breathing toxic fumes as they melt down circuit boards and other parts to get at precious metals inside. Before you pick a recycling company, do some research about what they do with the hardware they receive — if they can’t or won’t tell you, that’s a bad sign.
How can you tell which recycling companies are trustworthy? It’s not as cut and dried as you might hope. But there are some tools to help consumers like us find reputable companies. In the US, there are two major certification groups: e-Stewards, from the environmental watchdog BAN, and Responsible Recycling (R2), from the EPA. Here’s a list of most of the R2-certified recyclers, and here’s a searchable database of e-Stewards recyclers. R2 and e-Stewards both certify recyclers through “certifying bodies,” which are independent companies, who are in turn certified by the ANSI-ASQ National Accreditation Board. So, in all that alphabet soup, what’s the difference between R2 and e-Stewards? We looked into it. Some recyclers are certified only by one, and others have both certifications. The bottom line: We’ve reviewed them both, and we support both measures of accreditation. When you’re looking to recycle your electronics, you can trust a recycler with either certification.
That said, we thought it would be useful to take a closer look into why each standard exists and how they came about.
The Basel Convention
First, a little history of international hazardous waste policy: In 1987, an Italian waste broker approached a Nigerian businessman and asked to store some assorted construction materials on his land for $100 per month. Within a few months, however, the “construction materials” began to leak toxic waste. When Nigerian officials investigated at the port of Koko, they found 8,000 rusty, crushed drums oozing hazardous waste, including PCB (exposure to which can lead to liver damage, skin lesions, and a lowered immune response) and asbestos (a culprit in various cancers and lung disease). The workers charged with removing the waste were not properly outfitted, and many suffered “problems ranging from chemical burns [and] nausea to paralysis.” Official numbers vary, but one worker involved in the removal of the drums reports that 20 of his coworkers have since died from Tuberculosis, perhaps contracted as a result of their proximity to the waste. The ending is not quite Hollywood-worthy: Italy ultimately paid for the waste to be returned, but the waste broker fled Nigeria and successfully evaded capture.
The Koko incident, along with a number of similar international waste disasters, had long-term effects on global regulations of hazardous waste exports. The United Nations developed an international treaty, the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal. That’s a mouthful, but the essence is that the UN is trying to prevent developed nations from dumping hazardous waste in less-developed countries. Of the 176 parties (members) of the Basel Convention, only three have not yet ratified it: Afghanistan, Haiti, and the United States of America. As such, the United States is currently not bound by the treaty, and its exports of e-waste are limited by minimal and poorly enforced domestic laws. As a result, many e-waste “recyclers” continue to export non-functional American electronics to developing nations.
So why is the US lagging so far behind the international community in regulation of e-waste? Do Americans simply not care? Actually, American media has been filled with reports about exported e-waste over the last three years: National Geographic and The New York Times have both published photo essays about e-waste dumps in the developing world. Even just in the last few weeks, CNN, Scientific American, and Time have all published articles about the e-waste problem.
R2 and e-Stewards
In response to the growing public call for more responsible e-waste recycling, the EPA worked with the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries to develop R2. R2 standards require that companies follow a hierarchy of waste management, reusing and remanufacturing whatever devices they can, then recovering all possible reusable components of the devices left, and finally safely disposing of what hardware can’t be used in whole or part. R2 also established a list of “focus materials” — items containing PCBs or mercury, CRTs, batteries, and circuit boards — that companies should manage carefully. At around the same time, the Basel Action Network, a non-governmental organization dedicated to carrying out the goals of the Basel Convention, developed e-Stewards. Like R2, e-Stewards requires that companies remanufacture and recover all possible parts before disposing of hardware, limits the export of hardware, and asks for careful attention to toxic materials.
It’s up to you to weigh the merits of the two standards for yourself. Here are a couple other differences between the two: R2 allows for prison labor through UNICOR; e-Stewards prohibits it. R2 does not require an initiation fee or an annual fee for recyclers; e-Stewards does —and the money goes to BAN, which is decidedly against export of all electronics, even for reuse. R2 addresses employee health and safety via OSHA guidelines; e-Stewards has developed their own set of safety guidelines specifically for e-waste. Some companies feel very strongly one way or the other–here’s Redemtech’s argument for e-Stewards, for example.
Ultimately, e-Stewards, R2, and iFixit are all working toward the same goals: fewer exports of hazardous e-waste and better e-waste management practices within the United States. Scrapping electronics should remain a last resort: we need to work to reuse and repair hardware as much as possible. Once electronics finally reach their end of life, let’s get them to responsible recyclers that can reclaim as much raw material as possible.
Photo Credit: Kyle Wiens in Delhi, India
Comments
Ifixit, you guys rock! Not only are your repair manuals comprehensive but you are also making information avalible concerning world issues related to repairing and recycling! Truly the best repair guys around! Than you
I already love ifixit.com, and now I know I will become a fan of ifixit.org!
OK, firstly, this is a tremendously important issue to publicise. As a repairer I find ewaste offensive on many levels.
Secondly, none of the orange links or the comments field on this site are accessible using Opera, my browser of choice, this is the only site I’ve ever had this happen.
Thanks for the kind words! We’re very excited to tell the story.
Jorn, I just downloaded Opera 11 and everything looks all right to me. I can click on links and work with comments. In fact, I’m posting this comment from Opera. So I’m stumped! Perhaps try the latest version?
Your new website is the greatest idea ever and I will happily tell others about it!
The design of the website itself – is also very clean and sharp – visually pleasing and effortlessly efficient.
Since family budgets are becoming increasingly tight “fixing stuff” is once again becoming the “thing to do” here in the U.S.
Unfortunately, we are “missing” a generation of “fixers” to teach us this valuable skill.
Thus, everyone I’ve told about ifixit.com has become an immediate fan.
Your new website will further help undo the bizarre glorification of wastefulness that has plagued our society for far too long.
And concerning landfills . . .
Let’s not forget:
http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/earth/oceanography/great-pacific-garbage-patch.htm
Proving yet again – that throwing something away – only moves it somewhere else.
So, while folks may still wonder: If a tree falls in the forest and there’s no one there to hear it – does it still make a sound?
We now know beyond question: When we dump our garbage – where we think no one will see it – our garbage is still there.
Keep up the great work! You guys are awesome!
Welcome to the discussion! Wish you guys the best. I suggest you look into Basel Convention Annex IX section B1110 about export for repair and refurbishment. The Basel Convention, yes. The Basel Ban Amendment, however, is something completely different. Also, new research is seriously undermining the assumption that most material exported meets a bad ending. The anti-export group has now publicly withdrawn its statistic of “80%” non-reuse, and admitted the statistic was made up.
Great info. I always though that once I put the stuffs at recycle center, they are being taken good care. Looks like I have to check again to make sure they are really being recycle. Thanks!
We at the Fixers Collective (fixerscollective.org) find the e-stewards standard problematic at best with respect to our mission of improvisational fixing. In the Sanctioned Interpretations of the Standard, paragraph 4.4.6.2, if anything is less than fully functional, it won’t comply. The headless iMac G4 won’t comply. To extend beyond the interpretation, weaving a rug made from power cords may not comply either.
We are also disheartened from hearing one of the representatives of an e-steward in NYS talk about reuse in May 2011, emphatically claiming they “triple-check” any items deemed fit for reuse. We at the Fixers Collective wonder what happens to the items that failed the double-check. We know we’d tell people we (and iFixit) would give them the power to fix these items with their own hands and skills. We strongly believe these e-stewards miss a wonderful opportunity to build community through reuse, restoration, and repair, and THAT will lead to reduction and better recycling.
We’ll be examining R2 more closely, but we’d be surprised if ANY e-steward has read the iFixit Repair Manifesto.
Vincent
FixersCollective.org
Prohibiting good used electronics (as opposed to brand new shiny ones that big named manufacturers make every day), particularly while using the Basel Convention as your guide for reasoning (which, by the way, does not prohibit used (good) electronics from being exported), is not only disconcerting, but it makes me wonder who is actually financing BAN.
If we use the same logic, there should also be a ban on sending brand new electronics to these countries. You think brand new electronics don’t eventually need to be recycled or repaired?
What happens when a latest gen smart phone is dropped, broken, damaged or otherwise made unusable? How about multi-core 1/2 inch thick laptops? You think just because it’s “new” that it’s not going to be in a pile somewhere just as soon or sooner than good used electronics?
Withholding good usable electronics from hard working intelligent people reusing and refurbishing is nothing but racism hidden behind an environmental agenda with no basis of provable facts, logic or law. It’s no different than withholding brand new items and the information that is made accessible by using them.
The companies that send garbage to these very same people who are expecting good working electronics upon arrival to their ports should be the primary target of the US, not companies actually making a positive impact on these people’s livelihoods.
I have tried to find a recycler in Ontario Canada for akaline batteries as my company sells them. Nobody wants them without a huge fee. If I was to chargge the recycling fee I would lose the business. Sad. How many hit landfill every year in Canada alone? It has to eventually have an effect.
Anyone who can help please post.
@PSharpe ; Therein lies the problem, the main “company” that’s exporting garbage to other developing countries, as well as into outer space, is the United States’ Government(s); from the top all the way down to county gov’ts. Besides that your point is excellent.
@JohnLab ; Although I would love to (I mean, absolutely adore) blaming the Government for this problem, it’s just untrue. Let me explain.
In order to find the problem, go to a non-buy-back state like Ohio, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Kansas, Nevada, Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, N. Dakota, S. Dakota, etc, where there is no manufacturer responsibility law (whereas manufacturers are legally responsible to help pay recyclers to process their electronics).
Now in these states, find where the electronics are going when they get recycled.
Follow them.
You’ll find it’s pretty common for a truckload to wind up in a Buy-back state. This is called Fraud. It just so happens to be illegal.
When states like California, for example, start slamming the gates on this practice and deny the claims, then these very same companies have to dispose of the materials they bought (hoping to have gotten away with defrauding CA).
If they can’t get rid of it by tossing it in a hole in the desert or abandoning trailer loads, they ship it along with “good electronics” (if the receiver is lucky enough to get any good electronics) to countries that have no way to recycle these items.
The problem is not with our government, it is with local individual companies able to defraud buy-back states because of loose inter-state commerce laws in regard to electronics.
BAN not only completely ignores this problem, it promotes the export of bad electronics it by forcing companies to crush or recycle everything in the US, which (paying thousands of dollars a year plus a percent of your yearly revenue just to be an “e-steward”) is quite expensive.
So it’s cheaper and more efficient to take your chances in a buy-back state and/or ship it to China or worse some under-developed country than it is to just test and repair these items.
Before we bash the US EPA for not taking a tough enough stance on exports, let’s look in our own backyards first and find where the problem actually lies.
You’ll be surprised.
This is a good innovation.
Dear All,
just got on your website-could you please add and/or register me to your distribution list or newsletter? @ roswitha.kolb@techprotect.de = Senior Vice President Global Sales Geep EMEA/TechProtect
Thanks upfront and bw, roswitha kolb
Sure, Roswitha. Just added your email address to our newsletter list. You should get our emails now.
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