According to the opening page of Massachusetts Institute of Technologies Senseability City Lab's expose on second hand electronics, transboundary movement demonstrates likely environmental harm.
A joint project between the Basel Action Network (BAN) and the MIT Senseable City Lab has led to the discovery of previously unknown international electronic waste routes departing from the United States.Printer, and LCD and CRT monitors were embedded with GPS trackers capable of remotely reporting their location from overseas locations. These trackers were then delivered to recyclers and charities around the country. 65 of the first 200 trackers deilvered as part of the Monitour/e-Trash Transparency Project went offshore, mostly to Asia.
On-the-ground investigations in Asia by BAN produced a clearer picture of these trade routes. Results of this study can be found here on this site in graphic form and will also be released in a series of reports by BAN. These can be found at: www.ban.org/trash-transparency.
While legitimate e-waste recycling helps reduce landfill contamination and raw material extraction, the export of hazardous electronic waste is most often illegal trade under the Basel Convention and moreover, the management of toxic electronic waste in the informal sector damages human health and the environment.
The Monitour/e-Trash Transparency Project demonstrates how relatively new technology can generate unique data needed by civil society, law enforcement and enterprises to better track what until now have been hidden flows. Since the time of our experiment, the UN Organization on Drugs and Crime has confirmed that the Mong Cai border is a primary corridor for e-waste flowing from the US and EU into China, part of an estimated US $3.75 billion market for illegal e-waste.
Learn more about e-waste tracking here: Video.
"On the ground investigations in Asia by BAN produced a clearer picture of these trade routes." Really, MIT? Just how clear? Analog or high definition? Seriously, this is from Media Lab of all places?
As I showed
last week, the screen shots of the MIT's tracking project are difficult to see
at proper resolution; you can't zoom in. Instead, you must copy the
longitude and latitude and paste it into google maps, or rely on whoever is
writing written descriptions of the sites on MIT's website.
Then you find places like the Hafeez Computer Center in Faisalabad, Pakistan. It's near the center of a dense city, blocks away from one of Pakistan's largest universities. It is a long way from the port. Screenshot below.
We are writing to
MIT to offer to assist them in interpreting several tracking devices locations.
In particular, I'm focusing on CRT devices, which are governed by USA EPA
law. That law does not ban export for reuse, or even export for
recycling, but requires that export to be declared and investigated by EPA
prior to export.
The reason for
EPA's restrictions stem largely from the Basel Action Network (MIT's
"joint partner") declarations in 2002 and 2005 that the "vast
majority" of CRTs are not recycled, but are dumped overseas to avoid high
USA recycling costs. Overseas, BAN announced, the CRTs were most likely going
to be beaten by children with hammers to remove "valuable copper".
It is certainly true that CRTs are the most expensive type of electronic
waste to recycle, and it's true that any which are diverted for continued use
represent an avoided fee. It's also true that working display devices
have been in high demand for reuse and repair markets. Billions of people
owe their "teledensity" (mass media, internet, etc.) to used and
rebuilt CRTs sourced from wealthy nations.
