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Africa: Digital Dumps
AfricaFocus Bulletin
Mar 9, 2006 (060309)
(Reposted from sources cited below)
Editor's Note
Recycled computers and other electronic equipment have the
potential to help bridge the digital divide. But, says a recently
published study by the Basel Action Network (BAN), many quickly
find their way to toxic waste dumps, being not economically repairable or
usable.
According to the BAN study, African countries are a robust market
for such equipment, and many have good skills in repairing and
refurbishing old equipment. But their study reports that local
experts in Lagos say as much as 75% are "junk," which is simply
accumulated or burned in dump sites. The United States and other
exporting and importing countries need to properly enforce the
provisions of the Basel Convention, which is supposed to regulate
toxic electronic waste..
This AfricaFocus Bulletin contains a press release and executive
summary from "The Digital Dump: Exporting High-Tech Reuse and Abuse
in Africa." For more information, including photographs and
guidelines for safe export of used equipment, visit
http://www.ban.org.
++++++++++++++++++++++end editor's note+++++++++++++++++++++++
High-Tech Toxic Trash Exported to Africa
USA and Europe Creating a "Digital Dump" from "Re-Use and Repair"
Trade
Basel Action Network (BAN)
A Project of Earth Economics
122 S. Jackson St., Suite 320
Seattle, Washington 98104
Telephone 206 652-5555 Web: http://www.ban.org
Seattle, WA; Lagos, Nigeria. October 24, 2005.
A new investigation by the toxic trade watchdog organization, Basel
Action Network (BAN), has revealed that large quantities of
obsolete computers, televisions, mobile phones, and other used
electronic equipment exported from USA and Europe to Lagos, Nigeria
for "re-use and repair" are ending up gathering dust in warehouses
or being dumped and burned near residences in empty lots, roadsides
and in swamps creating serious health and environmental
contamination from the toxic leachate and smoke.
The photo-documentary report entitled "The Digital Dump: Exporting
High-Tech Re-use and Abuse to Africa," exposes the ugly underbelly
of what is thought to be an escalating global trade in toxic,
obsolete, discarded computers and other e-scrap collected in North
America and Europe and sent to developing countries by waste
brokers and so-called recyclers. In Lagos, while there is a
legitimate robust market and ability to repair and refurbish old
electronic equipment including computers, monitors, TVs and cell
phones, the local experts complain that of the estimated 500
40-foot containers shipped to Lagos each month, as much as 75% of
the imports are "junk" and are not economically repairable or
marketable. Consequently, this e-waste, which is legally a
hazardous waste is being discarded and routinely burned in what the
environmentalists call yet "another "cyber-age nightmare now
landing on the shores of developing countries."
"Re-use is a good thing, bridging the digital divide is a good
thing, but exporting loads of technotrash in the name of these
lofty ideals and seriously damaging the environment and health of
poor communities in developing countries is criminal," said Jim
Puckett, coordinator of BAN who led the field investigation.
The report includes evidence of numerous computer identification
tags from schools and government agencies as well as forensic
examinations of hard-drives picked up by BAN in Lagos, revealing
very personal information about their previous owners.. According
to BAN, much of this trade is illegal under international rules
governing trade in toxic waste such as the Basel Convention, but
governments, particularly the United States refuses to ratify,
implement or properly enforce these rules for toxic electronic
waste. Proper enforcement of these rules would require all such
escrap exports, whole or in parts to be properly tested for
functionality and certified to be going to re-use destinations
rather than for disposal or recycling.
"Things are completely out of control," said Puckett.
"Manufacturers have got to get toxic chemicals out of electronic
goods, governments have got to start enforcing international law,
and we consumers have got to be a lot more careful about what our
local "recycler" is really doing. It's time we all get serious
about what is now a tsunami of toxic techno-trash making its way
from rich to poorer countries, and start taking some
responsibility."
Following the publication of a report on their previous
investigation in China, entitled Exporting Harm: The High-Tech
Trashing of Asia, BAN, together with the Computer TakeBack Campaign
has initiated the E-Stewards Program in North America with now over
30 member recycling companies that have pledged to uphold the
world's most rigorous standards for social and environmental
responsibility in e-waste management. To locate a responsible
recycler that won't dump e-waste on developing countries visit:
http://www.ban.org/pledge1.html or
http://www.computertakeback.com/the_solutions/recyclers_map.cfm.
[end press release]
For more information contact:
Jim Puckett, BAN: Phone: office: 1.206.652.555", cell:
1.206.354.0391, jpuckett@ban.org
Sarah Westervelt, or Richard Gutierrez, BAN: 1.206.652.5555,
swestervelt@ban.org,
rgutierrez@ban.org
http://www.ban.org
http://www.computertakeback.org
Executive Summary:
Are We Building High-Tech Bridges or Waste Pipelines? The
electronics and information technology industry is the world's
largest and fastest growing manufacturing industry. As a
consequence of this remarkable growth, combined with the phenomenon
of rapid product obsolescence, discarded electronic equipment, or
e-waste, is now recognized as the fastest growing waste stream in
the industrialized world.
While this new waste stream would be of environmental significance
in any case due to resource and energy consumption, because of
widespread usage of toxic chemicals in today's high-tech equipment,
such as brominated flame retardants in plastics and circuit boards,
beryllium alloys in connectors, lead-tin based solders, lead and
barium laden cathode ray tubes, mercury lamps, etc., most of these
electronic wastes are hazardous wastes. This fact has been
recognized in international law in the Basel Convention a treaty
designed to control and minimize the transboundary movement of
hazardous waste.
Increasingly, the growth rate of information technology in
developing countries is becoming astronomic as well. Not only is
there a natural hunger among the populace in developing countries
to stay abreast of technological developments in order to compete
and communicate in an increasingly globalized world, but some of
the newer technologies, such as the Internet and cell phones, have
actually allowed developing countries to "leap-frog" over the
endemic developmental problems of inadequate infrastructure (e.g.
land phones, libraries, etc.).
Due to the lack of financial resources available to most people in
developing countries, much of the growth in the IT sector in
developing countries has been fueled by the importation of
hand-me-down, used equipment from rich, developed countries, whose
consumers are all too happy to find buyers for it. As a result,
many brokers and businesses have sprung up to channel used
equipment from North to South, rich to poor.
This sounds like it might have the makings of a classic "win-win"
situation, where the North can shovel away much of its growing
e-waste mountains that threatens groundwater in landfills and is
proving to be a serious burden for local municipalities, and at the
same time benefit those that are too poor to afford brand-new
equipment. Moreover, a further claim of victory for the environment
could be made, because the cheap labor in developing countries can
make repair and re-use of the old equipment feasible, giving it a
longer life and allegedly forestalling the need for more products
to be manufactured.
Unfortunately, BAN's latest investigation in Lagos, Nigeria, a new
hotbed of hightech growth and impressive entrepreneurial spirit,
reveals these visions to be the stuff of dreams. Seen at ground
level, the massive importation of used equipment is a success story
seriously clouded by the smoke of a growing environmental and
health disaster. The reality is that this burgeoning new trade is
not driven by altruism, but rather by the immense profits that can
be made through it and those involved are oblivious to, or
unconcerned with, its adverse consequences.
Too often, justifications of "building bridges over the digital
divide" are used as excuses to obscure and ignore the fact that
these bridges double as toxic waste pipelines to some of the
poorest communities and countries in the world. While supposedly
closing the "digital divide", we are opening a "digital dump". In
the current scenario of global electronic hand-me-downs, witnessed
in its nascent stages in Lagos, Nigeria, rich developed countries
lose an opportunity to enable their own national recycling
infrastructure, cleaner technologies, and the development of
innovative designs to prevent further toxics use. And, at the same
time, the developing countries are increasingly victimized by a
disproportionate burden of the world's toxic cyber waste.
According to those that stand to gain the most from this import
trade - the Nigerian computer dealers' business association
themselves (CAPDAN) - as much as 75% of the imported used computer
equipment is "junk" and not economically repairable or resalable.
And according to other local experts on the trade, an estimated 500
containers of used computers scrap of various condition and age,
enter the country each month. Each container is said to contain
about 800 computers or monitors, thus representing about 400,000
arriving each month. This amount is expected to follow the rapid
growth curve already seen in recent years. We have every reason to
believe that the used electronics trade taking place in Nigeria is
but one example of what is increasingly taking place every day in
the ports of developing countries worldwide, and certainly in
Africa.
Even if Africa possessed state-of-art waste management systems,
such disproportionate burdening of these toxic wastes on peoples
and environments in Africa would be an environmental injustice. But
in fact, the lack of any kind of ewaste recycling infrastructure in
Nigeria and other African nations, means that this useless imported
material ends up in the worst global examples of waste management
BAN witnessed formal and informal dumps where toxins are easily
leached into the near-surface groundwater and are routinely burned,
emitting airborne toxic chemicals such as dioxins, polycyclic
aromatic hydrocarbons and heavy metals.
This type of very damaging toxic trade, similar in many respects to
the export of ewaste revealed in Exporting Harm, is precisely the
type of trade which the global community sought to prohibit in the
late 1980s with the adoption of the Basel Convention. Indeed, a
substantial amount of this burgeoning trade to Africa and probably
throughout the developed world is in fact illegal under the Basel
Convention. Yet it appears that far too many governments are
looking the other way and are failing in dramatic fashion to
properly enforce and implement the Convention for post-consumer
electronic waste by failing to require adequate testing and
labeling to certify functionality and quality of the equipment to
ensure that it does not equate to trade in hazardous waste.
The worst actor on this list, the United States, refuses even to
ratify the Basel Convention, which is now ratified by 165 nations.
There are but three countries globally that have signed the
Convention (indicating agreement and intent to ratify) but have
never ratified it Haiti, Afghanistan and the United States.
Whereas Afghanistan and Haiti represent some of the most
impoverished lands on earth and contribute in a negligible way to
the global toxic waste burden, the United States is the world's
most wasteful country per capita. As the only developed country
absent at the table of the world's only waste treaty, the US can be
viewed as nothing short of a remarkable example of
irresponsibility. The US policy on electronic waste is shamelessly
negligent -- even to the point of failing to implement OECD
treaties demanding controls on all hazardous waste exports. Canada,
likewise, while nominally a Basel Party, seems intent on ignoring
the Basel waste lists to avoid controlling e-waste exports.
In the rest of the world, for those nations that recognize that
these exports of electronic discards are likely to be
cyber-contraband, it is time for them to begin to vigilantly
enforce existing rules and take the steps necessary to distinguish
between legitimate trade for re-use and the trade that needs to be
controlled or prohibited in accordance with the Basel Convention.
Europe, especially, must heed the fact that with the advent of the
WEEE (Waste from Electronic and Electrical Equipment) directive,
growing volumes of electronic waste will be collected, which,
without proper enforcement of their Waste Shipment Regulation,
could translate into a tsunami of electronic waste flowing from
port to port.
At the same time as the illegitimate trade is quashed, Nigeria and
other developing countries must be assisted in creating
environmentally sound waste management systems. This effort should
in no way be linked to the unsustainable exports of hazardous
wastes to them, but rather as a necessity for any country that must
deal with all kind of wastes. Adequate waste management is as vital
to a society as clean air, clean water and clean food, for today,
without it, we will have none of these things we have taken for
granted since the beginning of time.
This most recent BAN investigation revealed that Nigeria does
possess a remarkable capability to accomplish very highly skilled
repair and refurbishment operations. If the material that was being
handled were designed in the near future to be nonhazardous, or
even now, if proper trade controls were implemented under the
framework of the Basel Convention to ensure against the transfer of
hazardous waste, then the used electronics trade to Nigeria and
countries like it could approach the dream of a win-win scenario
for exporter and importer nation alike. In this way, product
longevity might well be achieved via export while countries like
Nigeria could be helped to leap-frog more rapidly into the
information age.
This then is our foremost recommendation. Governments must pressure
manufacturers to remove the toxic chemicals from this massively
proliferating industry at the earliest possible date. And until
that time, strict enforcement of the Basel Convention for the
hazardous hand-me-downs must become the norm. Thankfully, some
countries have already embarked on such measures of responsibility.
Australia is noted especially for seeing the problem described in
this report before most, and now implementing rules that require
full testing of electronic waste to certify compliance with the
Basel Convention prior to any export.
BAN also highlighted the number of consumers that currently fail to
take responsibility for their wastes either with respect to the
environmental concerns or likewise with respect to the concern of
protecting data privacy. As part of its investigation BAN gathered
hard-drives and found shocking amounts of private data exported
along-for-the-ride with the toxic waste which should be safeguarded
at all costs.
Thus, consumers of electronics, especially major consumers such as
banks, transnationals, government agencies, universities, school
systems, etc., must be called upon to conduct due diligence for
their entire waste chain. All businesses and citizens must ensure
that none of their e-waste discards are directed to the thousands
of ewaste brokers and so-called recyclers now offering cheap rates
and empty promises. Pains must be taken to uncover what may be
false promises of "recycling or repair" and the ability to take
your old computer "away". That magical place called "away" might
just be a burning dump on the other side of the world.
AfricaFocus Bulletin is an independent electronic publication
providing reposted commentary and analysis on African issues, with
a particular focus on U.S. and international policies. AfricaFocus
Bulletin is edited by William Minter.
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