Level 4 Reading 11B

Reading 11B

TECHNOLOGY AS TRASH As the sun heats the humid air in Accra—the capital city of Ghana— a terrible-smelling black smoke begins to rise above the Agbogbloshie Market. Past the vegetable merchants is a scrap market filled with piles of old and broken electronics waste. This waste—consisting of broken TVs, computers, and monitors—is known as "e-waste." Further beyond the scrap market are many small fires. Fueled by old cartires, they are burning away the plastic covering from valuable wire in the e-waste. People walk through the poisonous smoke with their arms full of brightly colored computer wire. Many of them are children. Israel Mensah, 20, explains how he makes his living here. Each day, scrap sellers bring loads of old electronics. Mensah's friends and family buy a few computers or TVs. They break them apart to remove valuable metals and wires, as well as any parts that can be resold. Then they burn the plastic covering off the wire and sell it. The key to making money is speed, not safety. "The gas goes to your nose, and you feel something in your head,"Mensah says as he knocks his fist against his head. "Then you get sick in your head and your chest." Broken computer and monitor cases are unwanted, and are thrown in a nearby lagoon. The next day, the rain will wash them into the ocean. The Problem of E-waste E-waste is being produced on a scale never seen before. Computers, cell phones, and other electronic equipment become obsolete in just a few years, leaving consumers with little choice but to buy newer ones to keep up. Each person in the world discards, on average, over six kilograms of e-waste every year. That's enough e-waste to fill 1.2 million trucks lined up from New York to Bangkok—and back again. Sadly, in most of the world, the bulk of all this waste ends up in landfills. There it poisons the environment; e-waste contains a variety of substances that are toxic, such as lead, mercury, and arsenic. Recycling is, in many ways, the ideal solution to the problem: E-waste contains significant amounts of valuable metals such as silver, gold, and copper. In theory, recycling gold from old computers is far more efficient— and less environmentally destructive—than digging it from the earth. The problem is that a large percentage of e-waste dropped off for recycling in wealthy countries is diverted to the developing world—to countries like Ghana. As the quantity of e-waste increases worldwide, it poses an increasing threat to the health of people living in the developing world. In 1989, 170 nations signed the Basel Convention to address the problem of the international trade in e-waste. The agreement required developed nations to notify developing nations of hazardous waste shipments coming into the country. Six years later, after pressure from environmental groups and developing nations, the Basel Convention was modified to ban hazardous waste shipments to poor countries completely. In the European Union—where recycling infrastructure is well developed— one law holds manufacturers responsible for the safe disposal of the electronics they produce. If e-waste continues to be shipped overseas, it may ultimately come back to harm the developed world. Jeffrey Weidenhamer, a chemist at Ashland University in Ohio, bought some jewelry made in a developing country for his class to analyze. It was distressing that the jewelry contained high amounts of lead, but not a great surprise, as jewelry with lead has turned up before in U.S. stores. More revealing were the quantities of metals such as copper and tin mixed in with the lead. Weidenhamer argued in a scientific paper that the proportions of these metals suggest that the jewelry was made from recycled computer parts. Since the developed world is sending large quantities of materials containing lead to developing nations, it's to be expected that those countries will make use of them in their manufacturing processes. "It's not at all surprising things are coming full circle and now we're getting contaminated products back," says Weidenhamer. In a global economy, it's no longer possible to get rid of something by sending it to other countries. As the old saying goes, "What goes around comes around." A Small Solution? There is hope, however, that more countries will transition to a "circular economy"— one that focuses on reusing materials and minimizing waste in the first place. An example is Australia, which has recently opened what has been called the world's first e-waste microfactory. The microfactory—which is only 50 square meters in size— includes several small machines that recycle e-waste. A machine first breaks down the discarded e-waste. A robot then identifies and separates the parts, which are heated and transformed into valuable materials that can be reused and repurposed. The process is clean, relatively inexpensive, and—if repeated—could help reduce the huge amount of e-waste that currently ends up in Australian landfills. Because of their small size, microfactories could significantly alter the way e-waste is handled and processed. This is true especially in remote locations where transporting and recycling e-waste is very expensive. Professor Veena Sahajwalla of the University of New South Wales says e-waste microfactories have the potential to tackle e-waste problems locally and provide business opportunities—a win-win for the environment and business. It also provides a model that could be picked up in other countries that currently send their e-waste overseas. Innovations such as e-waste microfactories, says Sahajwalla, "offer a cost-effective solution to one of the greatest environmental challenges of our age."

♪

♪