Before You Toss that Computer
How BC's e-waste recycling works. How it could work better.
Remnants of a clean industry?
The computer monitor behind my East Vancouver home has been languishing for two weeks, abandoned in the alley by a deadbeat owner either too lazy to recycle or too ignorant to know that better disposal options now exist.
Compared to its flat-screen successors, the bulbous cathode ray tube (CRT) monitor seems laughably wide, but what is concealed inside is anything but amusing: a nasty cocktail of barium, mercury, phosphorus, brominated flame retardants and lead.
To control the flow of such toxic e-waste to B.C. landfills, the provincial government stepped in and imposed an innovative fix beginning in August 2007 known as "extended producer responsibility." Simply put, this approach shifts the cost of recycling from taxpayers and government to producers and consumer buyers.
"It has become part of our culture to drop stuff on the curb and have the city take it away when we don't want it anymore," says Helen Spiegelman of the watchdog group Zero Waste Vancouver. "But now there is this cultural shift, where recycling is a cradle-to-cradle extended warranty by the producer, as opposed to a free public service offered by the mayor and council."
Since the program began, consumers across B.C. have paid an Environmental Handling Fee on purchases of new computers, TVs and a limited list of electronics; industry in turn has been obligated to collect fees and set up ethically-audited programs to ensure such materials do not enter the municipal waste stream or container ships to China.
But as the abundance of castaway electronics in our alleys and streets attests, not everyone is getting with the program. The industry-led process lacks the deposit incentive that has driven beverage container returns as high as 95 per cent, and is forcing Vancouver city taxpayers to pick up the tab for collection of derelict e-waste like the obsolete monitor in my alleyway.
What's more, none of the electronics currently recovered through the program will be reused, regardless of working order: for everything collected, there's a downstream recycler and smelter in the immediate future.
Measuring success
Under the banner of the non-profit Electronics Stewardship Association of BC (ESABC), major manufacturers selling electronics in B.C. are responsible for the operation of 94 provincial collection depots, which currently receive an average 1000 metric tonnes a month.
Less than two years in operation, Metro Vancouver environmental planner Andrew Doi says it is too early to know exactly how effective this industry-led recycling approach has been in terms of recovery rate and public compliance.
Before the program started, a Metro Vancouver waste composition study (designed to see what was being discarded in our landfills) estimated that more than 20 tonnes of computers, monitors, printers and TVs were trashed in metro landfills in 2004. In the 17 months the program has been operating, 12,000 tonnes of electronics were diverted from landfills across the entire province by the ESABC program.
Measuring success has been complicated by the recent spike in disposals of CRT monitors and TVs, as flat screen technology has become ubiquitous. Consumers also tend to keep computers and electronics over long periods of time, so measuring sales against returns is not an accurate measure. At present, nobody really knows how much is being discarded, and that is not likely to change despite efforts by the province to prescribe targets on industry.
Under B.C.'s recycling regulation, a 75 per cent minimum recovery rate is prescribed for the industry-led stewardship programs as a performance target, but there is not a specific timeline for manufacturers to reach this target.
"We gauge success somewhat differently," says Joyce Thayer, the ESABC executive director. "We recycle about 2.5 kilograms of our limited set of products, per person, per year in B.C., which is the second most successful program in North America.
Thayer adds that their job is even harder considering that more than 90 per cent of the products they have collected to date are 'heritage' devices -- old electronics bought before fees were collected for recycling, which they are still obliged to take.
Enforcing an electronics landfill ban
Putting Life Back into 'End of Life' Recycling
Joyce Thayer says a recent CBC exposé on dirty e-recycling demonstrates the challenges associated with reusing functional electronics collected by ESABC program.
"The reuse piece is challenging because there are bad actors out there who use the reuse label as a cover for sending materials overseas," she says. "We do not have a reuse standard in place yet, but we are working on it and have already hired a coordinator to work on this."
Thayer says that the recycling companies used to process their electronics are carefully audited to ensure that any offshore export is limited to OECD countries such as Belgium.
In the meantime, if you live near East Vancouver, the non-profit Free Geek Vancouver is providing a recycling solution that ensures discarded electronics in working order are reused before heading to the downstream recycler and smelter.
– C.P.
In January of 2008, Metro Vancouver imposed a landfill ban making it illegal to dispose of the electronics covered by the industry recycling initiative; the rationale for the ban was that landfilling e-waste was now unnecessary because consumers and business now had a recycling alternative.
With this ban has come the need for enforcement and fines: according to Metro Vancouver senior engineer Chris Allan, inspectors currently sift through 10 per cent of the waste loads coming to transfer stations and landfill sites across the Lower Mainland in search of banned materials. Inspectors encounter about 1500 violations of the electronics ban every year, imposing fines ranging from $1.50 to $500 depending on the size of the total load.
"We don't really have a handle on how much [banned electronics] is slipping through," he says, adding that Metro Vancouver is looking to increase inspection manpower in the near future.
This job will become more daunting as electronics recycling will expand dramatically in the coming three years under the same product stewardship model: by January 2010 recycling will be in place for small appliances, lighting equipment (including all light bulbs) and some batteries, and on July 1, 2012, large appliances, electric power tools, and more battery types will be covered. (For full list, see: www.env.gov.bc.ca/epd/recycling/electronics/info.htm.)
Picking up after deadbeats
The City of Vancouver estimates that about five per cent of the abandoned garbage it picks up today is derelict electronics, and that the quantity of such waste has increased markedly since the Metro Vancouver landfill ban took effect one year ago.
"This situation, where people are abandoning electronics , there's really no rhyme or reason to it because there are four or five depots in Vancouver alone," says Lindsay Moffit, recycling coordinator for the City of Vancouver.
In the case of the monitor abandoned in my East Vancouver alleyway, Moffit says a city crew will likely pick it up; it will then be transported to the Vancouver South transfer station, and collected by Encorp, the primary operator and manager of the ESABC electronics recycling program.
The only difference in this above process compared to returning electronics to a depot is that the deadbeat who threw the monitor in the alley is willing to let Vancouver City taxpayers do the heavy lifting.
Related Tyee stories:
- Earth's Eighth Continent
It swirls. It grows. It's a massive, floating 'garbage patch.' - The iPod Is Bad Garbage
The BC author of 'Made to Break' outlines the high price of planned obsolescence. - Rebooting Canada's Approach to E-waste
A bright idea to shrink the digital divide, and Third World landfills.
![[Tyee]](http://thetyee.cachefly.net/ui/img/ico_fishie.png){kind=small}
Vortigern1
04-02-2009
Interesting piece.
Interesting piece. Certainly, recycling electronic waste is a laudable goal, but the system seems to fall down precisely at the collection stage.
Now, it's one thing to have to make a special trip to recycle a computer screen that you're replacing once every several years (though even that's tricky for those without access to a vehicle), but when you have to make a trip to a central depot every time you have to dispose of a lightbulb or a battery.....
We might like to consider the environmental cost of making all these individual trips to a depot in order to dipose of e-waste. Would it be more environmentally friendly to establish a curbside program? Or, failing that, to have a much more decentralised collection system with, say, dozens of drop off points in a city like Vancouver?
G West
04-02-2009
Real Deadbeats
The real deadbeats are the retailers and manufacturers of this stuff - they're the ones who pushed the stuff out the door.
Make them responsible for collecting and warehousing electronic junk - and paying the considerable costs of recycling or re-using it.
Blaming the consumer is absurd - put the responsibility on the people who sold the electronic crack in the first place.
kristye
04-02-2009
The problem is, or at leas
The problem is, or at leas the problem that keeps a monitor and desktop tower on my living room floor right now, is that these items are unreasonably heavy to transport. I can't fit either item on my bike, carry both of them on a bus and I'm certainly unwilling to pay for a taxi to remove them. If you want a program to be highly successful you need to identify the barriers that keep people from participating. The city picks up my garbage, my paper and cans and plastic recycling. Why can't this program have a dial up request line for electronics pick up?
PatrickMcEvoyHalston
04-02-2009
Computer in my closet, and I don't know what to do with it.
I agree with kristye. If no help line, then some readily accessible "bin" is needed to make it happen. Household recyling was made easy and, wonderfully, at the same time--expected. Let's do the same for desktop towers, and all related.
rangergord
04-02-2009
Recycling fees: benefits flow only one way
While I do my part to recycle, including electronics, the recycling fees are arbitrary and an unfair tax on the consumer. Consumers were not consulted. Manufacturers should bear most of the cost of recycling what they produce. They will pass the costs on to consumers but they will also be forced to compete in the markets based on price. They will be forced to standardize, refurbish and design products that last. Thus the cost of recycling will come down over time just as production costs have. We can instead look forward to more fee hikes from misguided governments taxing consumption to death. The manufacturers get off scott free. In BC all the used electronics go to one company and others are not allowed to tap into the resource to reuse and refurbish. Monopolies are unfair. Here is a question, Can it be proven that the recycle fees have saved the government any money? I doubt it. The electronics manufacturers were saved from liability, the governments have saved nothing, and the consumers are paying big time. Right now I am required to pay the fee but it is up to me and my conscience to take the unwanted appliance to the recycler.
Ultimately the success of environmental initiatives depends on citizen's awareness and attitudes. Bad legislation does not encourage the cooperation of the public.
zalm
05-02-2009
I dunno.....
What do you guys do with your used paint thinner? Dump it down the toilet? Out in the street? I know some of you paint your places every once in a while.
What about your medications? Dump them in the garbage? Your household batteries? Your bike tires? Some of you leave your car tires in my alley even though there's been a collection program for them at every tire store for more than a dozen years.
All these and hundreds of other products besides are collected and recycled, disposed of safely or otherwise removed from the unthinking human's solution to all problems - out of sight, out of mind.
Patrick, I suspect that the closet computer you've got could, with three minutes work with a Phillips screwdriver, be disassembled into component pieces, and the metal case be put in your blue box. The remaining parts weighing less than ten pounds, could be dropped off at any of the more than 100 locations in the province, including four in downtown Vancouver.
If you chose to make it a priority, that is.
The fact is, some of us don't make it a priority. Others can't be bothered. nothing new here - that's the story of the human race. The hospitals I work for chuck out huge amounts of electronics, and it's an effort to even get the supervisors to pay attention to what's going into the bin, never mind the $10/hr housekeepers and furniture movers from other countries who don't understand English, never mind "cradle-to-cradle."
I mean, really, guys, if binners can travel a dozen miles with shitty shopping carts carrying scrap metal and cans to widely disparate locations on Charlie Chaplin shoes to earn a few dollars, surely some of you can turn the steering wheel a couple of extra turns and get out of your car for a few minutes to do the right thing.
Kristye, I hear your pain. But I'm sure you have friends who would be willing to help you, in return for dinner. If you're not willing to make it a priority, fine. But I ask you to look at the price you pay, if you won't take responsibility for disposing of your "coltan" products properly, when set against all the gas you're supposedly saving by cycling.
(He says as he sits in front of his year 2000 CRT monitor, wondering how long it will last.)
zalm
05-02-2009
GWest and rangergord
I hear you. But that would slow down the conveyor belt that runs from China to the west. You don't seriously think that thing can be set to run in reverse, do you? By people who won't even make the recycling programs they DO have work?
PatrickMcEvoyHalston
05-02-2009
zalm
We all now have recycling bins, and have curb pick-up: cities have made it easy. I suppose before, if we chose to make it a priority, we could have carted all our recycling off to one of a hundred different locations in the province, but the city made it easy for us to demonstrate we care. Good for them
I'd prefer some system where once every couple of months the city would pick up electronics, curbside. The dissassembling should be left to paid city employees, knowing that just asking that people disassemble their computers in "three easy steps," will ensure that less than should gets recycled/reused.
JStog
05-02-2009
Take responsibility for what you consume
The problem is far from the manufacturers.
Everyone posting here is guilty of using a this toxic vehicle to spread messages and communicate with others. Don't just blame the manufacturers blame the users too.
The ones who have to buy the latest electronics, constantly upgrading to newer faster machines and devices. The technologies will continue to get better and smaller but the consumer must take responsiblity.
I read a single Google search emits 12g of carbon into the atmosphere.
Is it getting better? NO! Its getting more toxic.
G West is wrong.
Warehouse your own obsolete electronics. Take responsibility for what you consume and what you throw away. If you don't want toxic light bulbs.... Don't buy them
alive
05-02-2009
shock hazard?
Good point about spending a few minutes dis-assembling your monitor and computer.
I seem to remember warnings about shock hazards when opening up these components, is that still a valid concern?
G West
05-02-2009
I disagree
The manufacturers and retailers have made enormous prifits out of selling and promoting their products.
The should have been tasked with disposing of their detritus safely and efficiently long ago.
As for consumer responsibility, of course that's important too.
To suggest that consumers should be warehousing this garbage is incredibly irresponsible.
Garages take back oil and batteries; retailers take bottle returns - forcing computer retailers and electonics dealers to do the same is the only sensible way to do things - rather than creating another 'service' industry like Encorp.
G West
05-02-2009
Erratum
That's PROFITS - sorry!
JStog
05-02-2009
Recycled electronics are toxic waste.
G West
larger profits are made by the consumers using computers and numerous electronic devices for pure financial gain.
Its irresponsible to
pretend all is well
pretend you recycled an item
only to find out in landed in a toxic waste pile in China. And is probably poisioning someone.
The videos are horrific.
http://www.engadget.com/2008/11/10/video-chinas-toxic-wastelands-of-consumer-electronics-revealed/
http://www.greenpeace.org/international/press/reports/recycling-of-electronic-waste
http://www.crunchgear.com/2008/04/04/guiyu-e-waste-capital-of-china/
Its well documented, Most Recycled Electronics from Vancouver are going straight to China. Is yours in the pile there somewhere?
If it still works, its really not garbage.
You can't just say its irresponsible to leave it on a shelf until a secure disposal method is properly established.
Yes the manufacturers should have a return program. In Europe its the law.
In the European Union (EU), waste from electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) is now subject to regulation designed to prevent the disposal of such waste and to encourage prior treatment measures to minimize the amount of waste ultimately disposed. The objective of this regulation is to preserve, protect and improve the quality of the environment, protect human health, and utilize natural resources prudently. In particular, the EU WEEE Directive 2002/96/EC (the WEEE Directive) requires that Producers of electronic equipment be responsible for the collection, reuse, recycling and treatment of WEEE which the Producer places on the EU market.
It takes Government regulation like the above to make it happen.
http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/Environment/activities/recycle/europe/index.html
We don't have that here.
G West
06-02-2009
JStog
I agree completely.
Glad you brought up the EU program.