Faces and Tales from E-Waste Internationals

Below, just some video of the faces from our 2007-2009 CEA Grant video of the Recycling Geeks and Tinkerers we met worldwide.  I was just goofing around with finding clips from different geeks we interviewed.  Demanufacturing and reuse with folks from Arizona, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Egypt, Indonesia, Louisiana, Malaysia, Mexico, Nepal, North Carolina, Peru, and Vermont.  There are hours of video uploaded from these countries at www.viddler.com, and not enough time or money to translate or edit them.  Viddler is a great alternative to Youtube, by the way, nice video quality.



Someday... while everyone else is doing documentaries and books... I'll find a way to get all this info into one place.  By then I'll probably have missed the boat, and no one overseas will be buying from Americans and Europeans anymore.

Speaking of books, I'm hopefully heading to Peru this Spring to see 3 important people in the e-waste recyclign field.   Ramzy Kahhat, one of the authors of the E-Waste Management book (coming out May 2012) has relocated from Arizona to the University of Peru.  We'll also meet with one of the Peru Techs in the viddler film - Ms. Jinex Midevil, a woman who owns a TV repair-for-resale shop (she's a big fan of the Chicas Bravas recycling operation in Mexico).  And we'll meet Dr. Livingston, I hope... Not naming names, since people have attacked him in the past for being primitive, but a friend (if competitor) who has stopped importing into Indonesia and is opening a refurbishing factory in South America.

Someday I'm going to have time to write a book myself.  For now, I'm just typing.

E-waste Management

From Waste to Resource

Edited by Ramzy Kahhat, Klaus Hieronymi, Eric Williams

To Be Published May 21st 2012 by Routledge – 264 pages

The landscape of electronic waste, e-waste, management is changing dramatically. Besides a rapidly increasing world population, globalization is driving the demand for products, resulting in rising prices for many materials. Absolute scarcity looms for some special resources such as indium. Used electronic products and recyclable materials are increasingly crisscrossing the globe. This is creating both - opportunities and challenges for e-waste management.

This book will focus on the current and future trends, technologies and regulations for reusable and recyclable e-waste worldwide. It will also compare international e-waste management perspectives and regulations under a view that includes the environmental, social and economic aspects of the different linked systems. It overviews the current macro-economic trends from material demand to international policy to waste scavenging, examines particular materials and product streams in detail and explores the future for e-waste and its’ management considering technology progress, improving end-of-lifecycle designs, policy and sustainability perspectives. To achieve this, the volume has been divided in twelve chapters that cover three major themes: (1) holistic view of the global e-waste situation, (2) current reserve supply chain and management of used electronics, including flows, solutions, policies and regulations, and (3) future perspectives and solutions for a sustainable e-waste management.

The emphasis of the book is mainly on the dramatic change of the entire e-waste sector from "the cheapest way of getting rid of e-waste (in an environmental sound way)" to "how e-waste can help to reduce excavation of new substances and lead to a sustainable economy."

It will be an ideal resource for policy-makers, waste managers and researchers involved in the design and implementation of e-waste.