Response to Redemtech Blog No Less Than ‘Amazing’

Last week’s Redemtech blog criticizing the producers of popular reality TV series Amazing Race for a recent episode’s depiction of environmentally unsafe e-waste disposition (watch “Fun With Recycling”) which aroused a lot of commentary from many people, ranging from experts in the industry to fans of the show, thanks to the speed of social media.

Several prominent publications, including GreenerComputing, TreeHugger and E-Scrap News, wrote their own opinion pieces supporting Redemtech’s viewpoint and noted the dangers of e-waste. I obviously hit a nerve with some fans who apparently did not understand the crux of the issue or felt we were being unfair to the show, even though the episode clearly showed contestants attacking end-of-lifecycle electronics with basic tools and their bare hands without realizing the health and environmental consequences.

Among the printable responses from Amazing Race fans were some inquiries regarding the nature of the e-waste crisis, which I feel obligated to address in our continuing effort to increase awareness. I also want to reiterate that the purpose of the previous blog was not merely to point out a lack of understanding about the e-waste crisis on the part of the people who produce Amazing Race, but to increase basic awareness that the crisis exists.

One comment we received expressed a desire to understand how old electronics can be dangerous to disassemble, as seen on TV. Specifically, they questioned how VCRs, which were the electronics smashed by contestants on Amazing Race, are hazardous.

Electronics include anything with electrical components, a few of which contain valuable elements such as gold and copper that can be reclaimed. Components also contain many elements like lead, cadmium, mercury, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and even radioactive isotopes that can expose people who handle the materials to many health problems.

Circuit boards, which are a vital part to VCRs as well as computers and other electronics, contain lead and tin solders that can leach into groundwater when haphazardly tossed into piles or dumps, as demonstrated on Amazing Race. Other scrap parts are routinely incinerated in primitive fire pits, releasing toxins such as brominated flame retardants into the air. This is why an entertainment program’s casual description of this activity as “recycling” electronics upset me, because many areas in Asia, such as the Vietnamese disassembly shop shown on Amazing Race, have become dumping grounds for Western nations that want to be rid of the e-waste their citizens generate.

Another popular question among those objecting to our blog was, “where do you get your facts?” I was glad to be asked this question, because Redemtech constantly researches the e-waste topic in search of facts that support and illustrate how severe the e-waste crisis has become in recent years. As part of its News Bureau, Redemtech produces a free bimonthly newsletter that contains only stories about e-waste to raise awareness and inform those who are interested of how the crisis impacts business, societies, regulatory venues, data security and, especially, the global environment.

Some examples of the types of facts we share with readers are included below:

• An expert from the Johns Hopkins University and Hopkins' Bloomberg School of Public Health explained the path of e-waste, from its beginnings in industrialized nations that mass-consume high-tech products with short life cycles to the shipments of e-waste to developing countries where cheap labor forces are governed by few labor, environmental, human rights or health standards. As a result, people in those dumping grounds suffer adverse health effects, including neurotoxiciy and carcinogenesis, and environmental pollution from toxic byproducts.
• Jim Puckett, executive director of Basel Action Network (BAN), noted in a news article how easy it has become for unscrupulous American businesses to circumvent the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s regulation regarding the export of computer monitors that contain hazardous materials. “There are literally hundreds of companies doing this, because being an exporter of e-waste is a very lucrative way to make money. They find places where labor is cheap and there's very little government infrastructure to manage the environmental harm," Puckett said.
• Frustrated by U.S. congressional inaction, a growing number of states are trying to reduce the rising tide of e-waste that has become one of the nation's fastest-growing waste streams by requiring electronics manufacturers to take back and recycle their products, according to another news article we summarized. Less than one-fifth of all e-waste today is recycled, experts say, while landfills continue to receive tons of discarded devices.
• Another article revealed how criminal gangs posing as computer recycling firms are dumping hundreds of containers full of e-waste in the developing world every week, with as many as 900 containers a week arriving in Africa and Asia from Western Europe and the U.S.

These are just a few samples of the hundreds of articles illuminating the e-waste crisis in painful detail throughout the year. The items we highlight are not obscure news articles plucked from the back pages of industry magazines, but stem from the front pages of prominent newspapers and topical websites. The items cited above drive readers to prominent newspapers such as the Baltimore Sun and the Chicago Tribune, as well as respected high-tech publications like Computer Weekly. This is where we get our facts and we earnestly share them with anyone willing to listen.

Perhaps I should put the issue in a comparable reality TV vernacular. Imagine how you might react if you tuned in for the next season of Survivor and found it set in a toxic waste dump. Competitors could swim through poisonous runoff from primitive pits where plastics have been incinerated or breathe deep the tropical air polluted by high concentrations of metals and dioxins.

Or perhaps a summer season of Big Brother where the house in which contestants are entombed is merely a graveyard for old computers and other electronics. House guests could bide their time by sorting through broken components to reclaim precious metals, which form as little as 1 percent of the total content of a device while the rest is scrapped.

I don’t think anyone would enjoy a reality TV series where the finale is unresolved or no one survives. That’s why we need to be aware of the e-waste crisis and do all we can to promote environmental stewardship based on principals of zero-landfilling and zero-overseas disposal.