Ask the Experts: Electronics
by Lori Brown
Published on July 26th, 2010
1 Comment
The increasing passage of electronic waste legislation is an enormous step forward in an effort to increase national collection and recycling rates. Photo: Flickr/massdistraction
If you follow legislation pertaining to electronic waste, you probably receive a new alert as often as you do a load of laundry. From producer responsibility take-back programs to advance recovery fees, electronic waste is an ever increasing issue in public policy.
When New York Governor David Paterson signed into law the Electronic Equipment Recycling and Reuse Act on May 28, the state became the 23rd in the nation to pass legislation pertaining to the recycling and disposal of electronic waste.
Though the states have the same goals of keeping hazardous end-of-life electronics and their components out of the landfills and reducing the financial burden placed on municipalities and taxpayers, the way each approaches their objectives can vary greatly.
The increasing passage of electronic waste legislation is an enormous step forward in an effort to increase national collection and recycling rates and keep hazardous components out of the environment, but this variation in approach from state to state leads many in the industry to debate whether the right strategy is being adopted or creating a non-harmonized and segmented headache.
There doesn’t seem to be an easy answer to this debate. States that have passed e-waste laws have shown their progressive handling of a serious environmental issue, and early data for those states has shown significant increases in electronic waste recovery. Others argue that creating 50 different e-waste laws is counterproductive and would prefer to see a blanket federal policy.
We’ll take a look at how a few distinct states manage their electronic waste laws as well as address current issues related to the collection, handling and recycling of these electronics. To get a different perspective, Earth911 interviewed Arizona State University School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment Professor Eric Williams Ph.D, considered by many to be one of the foremost electronic waste life cycle assessment experts in the United States.
New York
The newly signed New York Electronic Equipment Recycling and Reuse Act will require manufacturers of certain electronics to accept their manufactured electronics for recycling or reuse at their end of life, at no fee to the consumer, set to take effect April 2011.
This take-back program is a common form of extended producer responsibility (EPR), a way for manufacturers to bear the responsibility and show their commitment for their products long after the point of sale.
Local New York City company 4th Bin hauls off e-waste from residents and businesses. Photo: The 4th Bin
Take-back programs aim to remove the financial burden of handling this fastest-growing part of the waste stream from municipalities and taxpayers. Many believe this shift in responsibility will also encourage increased innovation in design, with more reusable and recyclable components being utilized.
Under the law, manufacturers are required to take-back their share of waste, calculated by their market share of electronic sales in New York. If they accept less, they are charged per pound of shortfall. They can also earn tradeable, saleable or bankable “recycling credits” by accepting more than their share of waste.
The law covers computers, televisions, portable digital music players, digital video recorders and electronic and video game consoles. It preempts the New York City 2008 e-waste law.
Earth911: As an average consumer, what should one look for when purchasing a new gadget? Are there specific features that will make disposing of something easier down the road?
Williams: There are some manufacturers that make it easier for consumers to recycle their products at the end-of-life by doing things like providing paid postage to mail it in, etc. So, it’s less a feature of the gadget than it is a policy that the company has put in place. Right now, that information is still not made very easy for the consumers to find. Some type of consumer card or message with the product’s packaging might make it easier for the consumers to know.
Oregon
Put into effect Jan. 1, 2009, Oregon’s HB 2626 is another example of a manufacturer financed take-back and recycling program.
The Oregon E-Cycles program is financed by electronics manufacturers and jointly implemented with the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ). The program covers computers (desktops and laptops), monitors and televisions.
Manufacturers are assigned a recycling obligation each year by the Oregon DEQ. They may participate in one of two programs to meet this goal: a State Contractor Program (SCP) or an Independent Program.
The SCP program is a per-pound recycling fee to the Oregon DEQ, based on return share by weight. The Independent Program can be applied to manufacturers whose recycling plan is approved by the DEQ each year.
In it’s first year, Oregon’s E-Cycle program collected 18.9 million pounds of electronics, more than 5 pounds per Oregon resident.
The disposal ban component of the law went into effect Jan. 1, 2010, making it illegal for both consumers and businesses to dispose of computers, monitors and televisions in the garbage or at collection sites including landfills, incinerators or transfer stations.
Earth911: As a researcher, educator and consumer yourself, what do you think your role in refining e-waste (how it’s disposed of, where it’s disposed of and who should pay for it) in the U.S?
Williams: We have all these questions of what we ought to do with e-waste, from trade bans and recycling certifications to Energy Star certifications. The question is do these things solve the problems we thought they would solve, and do they effect other problems that we hadn’t thought about when we made those policies? As a researcher, my job is to analyze these questions and try to find alternative ideas and policies managing the social and environmental implications of e-waste.
E-waste is usually seen as a purely environmental issue. But it is a social issue as well. The problem is we’re not trying to clean up the industry, we’re trying to just shut it down. We ought to first think of solutions that solve the environmental problems but allow people to keep their jobs. As an educator, I have to communicate these results to contribute to results and engage a broader audience.
According to Williams, "There are some manufacturers that make it easier for consumers to recycle their products at the end-of-life by doing things like providing paid postage to mail it in, etc. So, it's less a feature of the gadget than it is a policy that the company has put in place." Photo: Flickr/Jerry W. Lewis
California
The Electronic Waste Recycling Act of 2003 established a funding system for the collection and recycling of certain electronic waste materials, implemented by the California Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery (CalRecycle) working alongside the Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC).
The Act calls for the collection of an Advance Recycling Fee (ARF) at the point of sale of certain electronic products. This Electronic Waste Recycling Fee, which ranges from $8 to $25 depending on screen size, is used to fund authorized electronic collectors and recyclers, offsetting the cost of properly managing the products at their end of life.
Unlike bottle bills, the fee is not a deposit, and the covered products do not contain redemption value. Consumers are not reimbursed this fee when covered products are turned in for recycling.
The law also calls for the reduction in hazardous substances used in certain electronic products sold in California.
Earth911: A dilemma has been how to collect e-waste in the most efficient manner that consumers will respond to. In your experience, what type of collection has been most effective? Bins and kiosks at major retail outlets, community collection events, local pickup services? Do you have ideas for solutions yourself?
Williams: There are still many open questions on this. Some preliminary work suggests the curbside tends to work best. My thoughts are that you can talk people into bringing their electronics into a retailer like Best Buy, which makes sense from a logistic efficiency perspective.
It would be more efficient than collecting at the curb at each person’s home. But the thing is, to expect people to make a separate trip for their electronics, I’m not sure people are going to really do that. If somebody’s making the trip to that central location already, that’s a bit easier, but you’re still going to have people that question why they should have to load up their electronics in their cars to do this.
In my opinion, the potential of deposit programs are great. When you buy the electronics, you may pay $10 or $20 extra upfront, and when you turn that electronic back in you get [a portion of] that money back. It seems to me that has a lot of potential to increase the collection rates as people have an economic incentive to turn those products back in [a bottle bill variation type of perspective].
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
SUPER-COOL BBC STORY
21 July 2010 Last updated at 06:25 ET
Vibration packs aim to replace batteries for gadgets
By Michael Fitzpatrick Technology reporter
A Japanese electronics firm has shown off a vibration-harvesting generator that could replace standard batteries.
The Vibration Energy Cell batteries deliver power after a vigorous shake
Brother Industries, better known for its line of printers, claims the devices could be used in place of AA or AAA batteries for some applications.
At an event in Tokyo, the firm showed the device powering a TV remote control, a remote switch for a lamp and an LED torch.
The mechanism works similarly to that of a bicycle light dynamo, only in this instance movement from a few shakes provides the energy to power.
"Our Vibration Energy Cells generate electricity using a coil, a magnet, and condenser that charges electricity. These are all embedded in the battery," a Brother spokesman told BBC News.
"Because of its low output this type of cell is designed to be used for things such as TV remote controls and LED devices, which consume low power and do not consume electrical power continuously."
Energy shaker
The idea behind the technology is to remove the need for toxic rechargeable batteries and other disposable batteries that can harm the environment, said the company.
So far, two of the AA sized prototypes developed produce a voltage of 3.2V or lower, which is just enough to charge low power consumption device such as TV remote controls.
Despite the low power, Carl Telford an analyst at electronics business consultants Strategic Business Insights, says the batteries are a significant break through with much potential.
"It's great because they will work OK in a low-power application for AA batteries that one can shake without breaking; a remote control, for example," he told BBC News.
"Of its size, it is small, compact, and directly compatible with existing power sources. Brother says that it can produce enough power at reasonably low frequencies, around 4-8Hz - this is impressive.
"Walking with a device in your pocket would vibrate with a frequency of around 2Hz. You'd need to shake the remote quite briskly, but it would work."
Other researchers are also working on motion-generated and alternative power for gadgets and electronics in the hope of making them self-sufficient.
Energy boot
Amongst others, American company TenXsys Inc. is now developing its Kinetic Energy Scavenging technology for various application including those for the military.
And UK mobile operator Orange recently revealed its Power Wellies, created in collaboration with renewable energy experts GotWind.
Using a "power generating sole" the boots convert heat from the wearer's feet into an electrical current.
This "welectricity" can then be used to re-charge a mobile phone. Twelve hours of stomping in the Orange Power Wellies will give enough power to charge a mobile phone for one hour, according to the company.
Brother claims no such effort is needed to power its batteries.
A TV remote control would require a power-inducing shake after 10-30 button presses says Brother.
"It does not matter how long you shake it. It depends on the number of shakes, and how you shake. It varies depending on the force - long swing or short swing or speed of swing, etc - you put in to shake the remote," the spokesman said.
There are no plans to commercialise the batteries as yet, according to Brother.
"Currently the cells are still in the trial phase and so far we do not have a clear business plan for this item. However, we will continue to monitor the market to make a business plan when needed."
Vibration packs aim to replace batteries for gadgets
By Michael Fitzpatrick Technology reporter
A Japanese electronics firm has shown off a vibration-harvesting generator that could replace standard batteries.
The Vibration Energy Cell batteries deliver power after a vigorous shake
Brother Industries, better known for its line of printers, claims the devices could be used in place of AA or AAA batteries for some applications.
At an event in Tokyo, the firm showed the device powering a TV remote control, a remote switch for a lamp and an LED torch.
The mechanism works similarly to that of a bicycle light dynamo, only in this instance movement from a few shakes provides the energy to power.
"Our Vibration Energy Cells generate electricity using a coil, a magnet, and condenser that charges electricity. These are all embedded in the battery," a Brother spokesman told BBC News.
"Because of its low output this type of cell is designed to be used for things such as TV remote controls and LED devices, which consume low power and do not consume electrical power continuously."
Energy shaker
The idea behind the technology is to remove the need for toxic rechargeable batteries and other disposable batteries that can harm the environment, said the company.
So far, two of the AA sized prototypes developed produce a voltage of 3.2V or lower, which is just enough to charge low power consumption device such as TV remote controls.
Despite the low power, Carl Telford an analyst at electronics business consultants Strategic Business Insights, says the batteries are a significant break through with much potential.
"It's great because they will work OK in a low-power application for AA batteries that one can shake without breaking; a remote control, for example," he told BBC News.
"Of its size, it is small, compact, and directly compatible with existing power sources. Brother says that it can produce enough power at reasonably low frequencies, around 4-8Hz - this is impressive.
"Walking with a device in your pocket would vibrate with a frequency of around 2Hz. You'd need to shake the remote quite briskly, but it would work."
Other researchers are also working on motion-generated and alternative power for gadgets and electronics in the hope of making them self-sufficient.
Energy boot
Amongst others, American company TenXsys Inc. is now developing its Kinetic Energy Scavenging technology for various application including those for the military.
And UK mobile operator Orange recently revealed its Power Wellies, created in collaboration with renewable energy experts GotWind.
Using a "power generating sole" the boots convert heat from the wearer's feet into an electrical current.
This "welectricity" can then be used to re-charge a mobile phone. Twelve hours of stomping in the Orange Power Wellies will give enough power to charge a mobile phone for one hour, according to the company.
Brother claims no such effort is needed to power its batteries.
A TV remote control would require a power-inducing shake after 10-30 button presses says Brother.
"It does not matter how long you shake it. It depends on the number of shakes, and how you shake. It varies depending on the force - long swing or short swing or speed of swing, etc - you put in to shake the remote," the spokesman said.
There are no plans to commercialise the batteries as yet, according to Brother.
"Currently the cells are still in the trial phase and so far we do not have a clear business plan for this item. However, we will continue to monitor the market to make a business plan when needed."
GULFNEWS STORY
Trash Truth: What a waste
A single cellphone ending up as waste can contaminate 600,000 litres of water. Now imagine the havoc wrought on human health and the environment by tonnes of E-waste dumped into landfills across the UAE each day
By Sharmila Dhal, Senior ReporterPublished: 00:00 July 22, 2010Reader comments (0)
170,000 cellphones collected by Enviroserve from its collection boxes across the UAE since 2008Image Credit: SuppliedImage 1 of 3123
Dubai: Tonnes of electronic waste with highly toxic chemicals including carcinogens are being dumped into UAE landfills, causing irreversible damage to ground water, soil fertility and human health, officials and environmentalists have warned.
The country may boast of a $2.8 billion (Dh10.28 billion) spending on consumer electronics in 2010 with a record mobile phone penetration of 140 per cent, but regular acquisitions and upgradations of these devices by techno-savvy and throw-at-will consumers is causing concern as the obsolete or surplus items they replace are being recklessly discarded.
"Presently, e-waste is disposed (of) at landfills," Engr Hassan Mohammad Makki, Director of Waste Management Department at Dubai Municipality, told XPRESS, warning that, "This can lead to contamination of groundwater due to heavy metal concentration."
Enviroserve, a federally accredited operator to deal with e-waste, said a single cellphone ending up in a landfill could contaminate up to 600,000 litres of water.
Indifferent public
Sources said as callous residents throw everything from organic waste and paper, plastics and glass to obsolete electrical and electronic items into the same bins in their homes, large swathes of the desert in the suburbs of Dubai such as Jebel Ali, Al Ghusais and Al Lusaili could slowly be turning toxic as much of the non-segregated waste gets emptied into landfills in these areas.
They said lead, mercury, cadmium and other poisonous chemicals in the e-waste add toxins to the leachate of the soil, affecting vegetation and the animals feeding on it. The potential damage to human health is severe as many of these chemicals are carcinogenic and can also affect the functioning of the brain, kidneys and other vital organs (see box).
"The issue is extremely grave as most people here want the latest, most advanced electronic products at all times. As they buy new ones, most of them do not know what to do with their old products and end up disposing of them irresponsibly. When these electronic products end up in a landfill, they cause grave environmental damage," said Habiba Al Marashi, Chairperson, Emirates Environmental Group and Board Member, UN Global Compact.
Although the exact amount of e-waste generated in the country is yet to be ascertained, Habiba said, "With the advent of new mobiles, computers, laptops and televisions, the pile of e-waste in the UAE is bigger than ever before." The reasons behind this hazardous build-up are being largely blamed on an irresponsible public, inadequate infrastructure and lack of legislation.
Although there are select avenues to drop off recyclable and reusable e-waste (see box), residents either remain unaware of this or lack the will to make a trip to these designated places.
A Bur Dubai resident said facilities to discard different kinds of e-waste are neither adequate nor convenient. "Why can't the municipality have another bin for e-waste along with the three bins it has installed near bus shelters? Currently they are meant only for the disposal of paper, bottles and cans and general trash," he said.
Efforts so far by companies and NGOs to collect old mobiles or other electronic items are more in the nature of periodic campaigns rather than a sustained exercise.
As a result, large amounts of e-waste go into the bins of our homes and this mass just gets bigger and more hazardous as it is shoved into building chutes, roadside wheel bins and into the compactor trucks of the municipality and waste management companies that, for the most part, empty them into the landfills.
No distinction
Ajay Kumar, Operations Manager at Dulsco, a leading waste management company in Dubai, said compactor trucks do not distinguish between the different types of waste which are merely crushed and then dumped into the landfills.
Sajida Shaikh, General Manager, Marketing & Customer Service, Dulsco, said, "Sorting should happen at the source of waste generation, and not be a post-collection process."
Such a segregation, said Kumar, would help recover resources from the waste and also ensure that recyclables are not contaminated by organic waste.
"Having said that, we do send around eight-ten of our trucks to Tadweer for post-collection sorting," he said.
But a large percentage of the trucks, be it from firms like Dulsco — it has a total fleet of 100 trucks — or elsewhere, make their way to the landfills at Jebel Ali, Al Ghusais or Al Lusaili in Dubai.
While the pioneering Tadweer which segregates recyclable materials and treats biological waste to make compost does its bit, sources said recycling remains an infant industry in the UAE while refineries for processing e-waste and extracting raw material like gold, silver and copper remain non-existent.
They said currently, recycling is largely confined to items such as paper, glass, plastics and cans with names like Union Paper Mills (paper) and Horizon Technology (PET processing) being at the forefront.
In terms of e-waste, companies like Enviroserve and more recent entrants like the Green Foundation, manually disassemble mobile phones or other types of e-waste they collect from corporations, individuals, NGOs etc at local facilities for recycling, but send the more complicated recyclable elements such as cartridges, batteries, motherboards and data cables to certified facilities in Europe where they are broken down into spare parts and melted down into metals, precious metals or plastics.
Zornitza Hadjitodorova, Division Manager, E-waste, Enviroserve, said the company has collected over 170,000 mobile phones since 2008 from its Envirophone collection boxes across the UAE which have been recycled. Similarly, Makki said Dubai Municipality has collected 60,495 computers since 2007 which have been refurbished at the PC Refurbishment Centre and donated to charities. A separate section to collect household electronic and electrical equipment waste has also been set up by the civic authority.
Green foundation
Besides targeting corporations and charities, the Green Foundation collects e-waste in a consumer initiative launched at Emax electronics stores in the region, Jonathan Tozer, Marketing Director at the foundation, said.
The lack of refineries has spawned a huge unorganised industry where scrap dealers buy old electrical and electronic products to sell them again for profit. "Reuse is a grey area," said Zornitza, "because you do not know if a product is reused as a whole, if data is removed or if it is crushed and ends up in the landfill."
Although the UAE is a signatory to the Basel Convention of 1990 that requires it to minimise the generation of e-waste, legislation on e-waste management is yet to come about.
"Necessary legislations are not in place for the disposal of e-waste," admitted Makki, but explained that the municipality's Waste Management Department, in association with an international consultant, is working out effective waste minimisation strategies. "The consultants have submitted the draft minimisation strategy and it is being reviewed by a committee in the municipality," he revealed.
In the absence of a clear legislation, it is not binding on manufacturers to take back end-of-use electronic equipment, although many of them include a small recycling fee in the original selling price.
Experts said unlike the West where residents are obliged to pay a waste tax, people in the UAE get away with dumping. There is no disposal fee either, with trucks that empty the non-segregated waste into the landfills having to pay as little as Dh10 per truck as a gate charge. "People come here as expatriates and forget that it is their responsibility to keep the environment safe," said Zornitza, adding that sustainable solutions to lower the carbon footprint should be developed.
Ajay Kumar said one way out could be to come up with incentive schemes for villa and apartment owners to influence people to recycle. Targets need to be set with those achieving them being rewarded and others being penalised. This could well be linked with the upcoming housing fee, he suggested.
Health Hazards
E-waste could contain several hazardous chemicals, including lead, cadmium, mercury, chromium, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and polyvinyl chlorides which affect human health:
Lead present in TV monitors, cathode ray tubes etc damages the brain and nervous system. Vomiting, diarrhoea, convulsions etc are common in small-dose exposures. Children and pregnant women are especially vulnerable
Cadmium in circuit boards, batteries etc is a carcinogenic and affects the functions of kidney, liver and hormones
Mercury in flat panel display screens, thermometers, electric meters etc, is a neurotoxin and even in small doses, can cause severe brain and kidney damage
Chromium causes lung cancer, besides affecting the nose, throat and lungs
Printed circuit boards release brominated flame retardants, mercury and isocyanates which can be deadly
A single cellphone ending up as waste can contaminate 600,000 litres of water. Now imagine the havoc wrought on human health and the environment by tonnes of E-waste dumped into landfills across the UAE each day
By Sharmila Dhal, Senior ReporterPublished: 00:00 July 22, 2010Reader comments (0)
170,000 cellphones collected by Enviroserve from its collection boxes across the UAE since 2008Image Credit: SuppliedImage 1 of 3123
Dubai: Tonnes of electronic waste with highly toxic chemicals including carcinogens are being dumped into UAE landfills, causing irreversible damage to ground water, soil fertility and human health, officials and environmentalists have warned.
The country may boast of a $2.8 billion (Dh10.28 billion) spending on consumer electronics in 2010 with a record mobile phone penetration of 140 per cent, but regular acquisitions and upgradations of these devices by techno-savvy and throw-at-will consumers is causing concern as the obsolete or surplus items they replace are being recklessly discarded.
"Presently, e-waste is disposed (of) at landfills," Engr Hassan Mohammad Makki, Director of Waste Management Department at Dubai Municipality, told XPRESS, warning that, "This can lead to contamination of groundwater due to heavy metal concentration."
Enviroserve, a federally accredited operator to deal with e-waste, said a single cellphone ending up in a landfill could contaminate up to 600,000 litres of water.
Indifferent public
Sources said as callous residents throw everything from organic waste and paper, plastics and glass to obsolete electrical and electronic items into the same bins in their homes, large swathes of the desert in the suburbs of Dubai such as Jebel Ali, Al Ghusais and Al Lusaili could slowly be turning toxic as much of the non-segregated waste gets emptied into landfills in these areas.
They said lead, mercury, cadmium and other poisonous chemicals in the e-waste add toxins to the leachate of the soil, affecting vegetation and the animals feeding on it. The potential damage to human health is severe as many of these chemicals are carcinogenic and can also affect the functioning of the brain, kidneys and other vital organs (see box).
"The issue is extremely grave as most people here want the latest, most advanced electronic products at all times. As they buy new ones, most of them do not know what to do with their old products and end up disposing of them irresponsibly. When these electronic products end up in a landfill, they cause grave environmental damage," said Habiba Al Marashi, Chairperson, Emirates Environmental Group and Board Member, UN Global Compact.
Although the exact amount of e-waste generated in the country is yet to be ascertained, Habiba said, "With the advent of new mobiles, computers, laptops and televisions, the pile of e-waste in the UAE is bigger than ever before." The reasons behind this hazardous build-up are being largely blamed on an irresponsible public, inadequate infrastructure and lack of legislation.
Although there are select avenues to drop off recyclable and reusable e-waste (see box), residents either remain unaware of this or lack the will to make a trip to these designated places.
A Bur Dubai resident said facilities to discard different kinds of e-waste are neither adequate nor convenient. "Why can't the municipality have another bin for e-waste along with the three bins it has installed near bus shelters? Currently they are meant only for the disposal of paper, bottles and cans and general trash," he said.
Efforts so far by companies and NGOs to collect old mobiles or other electronic items are more in the nature of periodic campaigns rather than a sustained exercise.
As a result, large amounts of e-waste go into the bins of our homes and this mass just gets bigger and more hazardous as it is shoved into building chutes, roadside wheel bins and into the compactor trucks of the municipality and waste management companies that, for the most part, empty them into the landfills.
No distinction
Ajay Kumar, Operations Manager at Dulsco, a leading waste management company in Dubai, said compactor trucks do not distinguish between the different types of waste which are merely crushed and then dumped into the landfills.
Sajida Shaikh, General Manager, Marketing & Customer Service, Dulsco, said, "Sorting should happen at the source of waste generation, and not be a post-collection process."
Such a segregation, said Kumar, would help recover resources from the waste and also ensure that recyclables are not contaminated by organic waste.
"Having said that, we do send around eight-ten of our trucks to Tadweer for post-collection sorting," he said.
But a large percentage of the trucks, be it from firms like Dulsco — it has a total fleet of 100 trucks — or elsewhere, make their way to the landfills at Jebel Ali, Al Ghusais or Al Lusaili in Dubai.
While the pioneering Tadweer which segregates recyclable materials and treats biological waste to make compost does its bit, sources said recycling remains an infant industry in the UAE while refineries for processing e-waste and extracting raw material like gold, silver and copper remain non-existent.
They said currently, recycling is largely confined to items such as paper, glass, plastics and cans with names like Union Paper Mills (paper) and Horizon Technology (PET processing) being at the forefront.
In terms of e-waste, companies like Enviroserve and more recent entrants like the Green Foundation, manually disassemble mobile phones or other types of e-waste they collect from corporations, individuals, NGOs etc at local facilities for recycling, but send the more complicated recyclable elements such as cartridges, batteries, motherboards and data cables to certified facilities in Europe where they are broken down into spare parts and melted down into metals, precious metals or plastics.
Zornitza Hadjitodorova, Division Manager, E-waste, Enviroserve, said the company has collected over 170,000 mobile phones since 2008 from its Envirophone collection boxes across the UAE which have been recycled. Similarly, Makki said Dubai Municipality has collected 60,495 computers since 2007 which have been refurbished at the PC Refurbishment Centre and donated to charities. A separate section to collect household electronic and electrical equipment waste has also been set up by the civic authority.
Green foundation
Besides targeting corporations and charities, the Green Foundation collects e-waste in a consumer initiative launched at Emax electronics stores in the region, Jonathan Tozer, Marketing Director at the foundation, said.
The lack of refineries has spawned a huge unorganised industry where scrap dealers buy old electrical and electronic products to sell them again for profit. "Reuse is a grey area," said Zornitza, "because you do not know if a product is reused as a whole, if data is removed or if it is crushed and ends up in the landfill."
Although the UAE is a signatory to the Basel Convention of 1990 that requires it to minimise the generation of e-waste, legislation on e-waste management is yet to come about.
"Necessary legislations are not in place for the disposal of e-waste," admitted Makki, but explained that the municipality's Waste Management Department, in association with an international consultant, is working out effective waste minimisation strategies. "The consultants have submitted the draft minimisation strategy and it is being reviewed by a committee in the municipality," he revealed.
In the absence of a clear legislation, it is not binding on manufacturers to take back end-of-use electronic equipment, although many of them include a small recycling fee in the original selling price.
Experts said unlike the West where residents are obliged to pay a waste tax, people in the UAE get away with dumping. There is no disposal fee either, with trucks that empty the non-segregated waste into the landfills having to pay as little as Dh10 per truck as a gate charge. "People come here as expatriates and forget that it is their responsibility to keep the environment safe," said Zornitza, adding that sustainable solutions to lower the carbon footprint should be developed.
Ajay Kumar said one way out could be to come up with incentive schemes for villa and apartment owners to influence people to recycle. Targets need to be set with those achieving them being rewarded and others being penalised. This could well be linked with the upcoming housing fee, he suggested.
Health Hazards
E-waste could contain several hazardous chemicals, including lead, cadmium, mercury, chromium, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and polyvinyl chlorides which affect human health:
Lead present in TV monitors, cathode ray tubes etc damages the brain and nervous system. Vomiting, diarrhoea, convulsions etc are common in small-dose exposures. Children and pregnant women are especially vulnerable
Cadmium in circuit boards, batteries etc is a carcinogenic and affects the functions of kidney, liver and hormones
Mercury in flat panel display screens, thermometers, electric meters etc, is a neurotoxin and even in small doses, can cause severe brain and kidney damage
Chromium causes lung cancer, besides affecting the nose, throat and lungs
Printed circuit boards release brominated flame retardants, mercury and isocyanates which can be deadly
Monday, July 19, 2010
ANOTHER STORY WHERE THE PETTINESS OF FEDERALISM AND CAPITALISM APPLIES
California's pioneering e-waste program a model gone wrong
tknudson@sacbee.com
PUBLISHED SUNDAY, JUL. 18, 2010
It seemed a perfect symmetry: California, the world's high-tech capital, would lead the way in recycling the debris of our digital revolution.
But five years after its launch, the state government-run electronic waste program stands out not as a model of the green innovation for which California is famous but as an example of good intentions gone awry.
By paying more than $320 million to collect and recycle computer monitors and televisions, the state has built a magnet for fraud totaling tens of millions of dollars, including illegal material smuggled in from out of state.
"I don't think anybody could have forecast the greed that has poisoned the program," said Bob Erie, chief executive officer of E-World Recyclers north of San Diego and once an enthusiastic supporter of the state effort.
None of the many states that followed California took on e-waste recycling as a government program; instead they made industry responsible for its own waste.
California officials have long been aware of the problems with their approach, too; they met with recycling industry officials two years ago at a private club in Los Angeles to discuss solutions, including whether the state should be in the e-waste business at all.
But nothing has changed. Instead, The Bee found:
• Recyclers and collectors have submitted $23 million in faulty and fraudulent e-waste claims that have been rejected by the state. But state and industry officials estimate that other ineligible claims, totaling as much as $30 million, may have inadvertently been paid.
• More than two dozen e-waste firms have been investigated for fraud by the state Department of Toxic Substances Control over the past two years, but none has been fined or prosecuted.
• Even though California officials know that illegal e-waste is flowing into the state – and acknowledge that public funds are being wasted recycling some of it – no state official has traveled out of state to investigate.
A new California Gold Rush
Truck after truck drops its load of electronic garbage at ECS Refining, one of the state's best-known e-waste recyclers based in the heart of Silicon Valley.
Until it is fed into two ear-piercing shredders, the pyramid of printers, fax machines, keyboards, CD players and telephones serves as a monument to our electronic obsession.
Not far away, some of the heaviest, most hazardous material also piles up: computer monitors and TVs – both of which contain significant amounts of lead. Each year Californians discard about 3.3 million of them, 9,200 a day on average.
Those larger items are the targets of California's e-waste recycling program, which began Jan. 1, 2005. Six million unwanted monitors and TVs that had no value on New Year's Eve turned into green gold overnight.
The goal of the law was to prevent lead-laden glass tubes from winding up in landfills while jump-starting a green industry to collect and recycle the castoffs. At that, it has been a resounding success.
So far some 840 million pounds of monitors and TVs, about 17 million units, have been recycled in California, far more than in any other state.
"It's easy to throw stones, but the hard numbers on what we've recycled as a state are astonishing," said John Shegerian, chief executive officer of Electronic Recyclers International.
His firm, based in Fresno, is the largest monitor and TV recycler in the state. But that distinction bears a footnote: The state has rejected $2.7 million of ERI's claims, mostly in 2008 and 2009, state records show.
"I am not happy about it. I am not proud of it," said Shegerian, blaming tougher state scrutiny of e-waste sources for the denials. "That was a black period. And financially it hurt."
California's electronic waste recycling system could be likened to a gigantic river. At the mouth of the waterway are some 60 recyclers who tear apart TVs and monitors for copper, steel, plastic and other components.
Upstream are more than 500 collectors, who funnel e-waste to recyclers. Farther upstream are handlers – scavengers and peddlers – who round up material to sell to the collectors.
Overseeing the flow are two agencies: CalRecycle, which scrutinizes claims and pays recyclers, and the Department of Toxic Substances Control, which investigates fraud and environmental violations.
Funding it all are state consumers, through an $8 to $25 fee on the purchase of new monitors and televisions.
At the program's inception, with hundreds of millions of dollars in state payments up for grabs, companies seemed to appear out of nowhere.
"It was the second coming of the California Gold Rush," said Erie, the Southern California recycler. "They came from Texas. They came from Pennsylvania. They came from all over the place and said, 'Let's open up in California because the government's paying money.' "
That frenzy caught the state off guard. Faulty and fraudulent claims of $1.9 million the first year climbed to $6.8 million in 2008 and to $9.8 million last year; overall the state has rejected payment on 6.5 percent of all claims – $22.6 million out of $347 million.
Unknown is how many ineligible claims have escaped notice. "If you are going to hold me to a number, add probably another 10 percent for the stuff that got through," said Jeff Mahan, chief of the e-waste fraud unit at the toxic substances control department.
To qualify for payment, recyclers must document that monitors and TVs come from California. But the logbooks they give the state, with names and addresses of the original owners – provided by collectors and handlers who gathered the waste – frequently read like works of fiction.
There are bogus names, made-up addresses, dead people and Hollywood celebrities. And there is brazenness by the truckload.
"I would find Dustin Hoffman's name, Robin Williams' name, Mike Tyson's name. It's just incredible," Mahan said.
Here's what one state official wrote after spot-checking a 2009 claim from SIMS Recycling Solutions headquarters in Roseville seeking $482,000 for 1.2 million pounds of e-waste delivered to its Southern California plant:
"100% of the sources contacted stated they DND (did not discard) … The last names appear to have been looked up in some sort of alphabetical directory … . Patterns of falsehood are obvious in these logs."
That entire $482,000 claim was rejected. In all, the state has turned down $4.5 million in e-waste claims from SIMS, the most in the state.
SIMS has appealed the denials. But its president, Steve Skurnac, acknowledged that his firm should have screened names more carefully.
"The onus is on us to prove that it's qualified material," Skurnac added. "We understand that."
Other surprises emerged as the state learned about the scramble for e-waste on the streets of Los Angeles and San Francisco – and the sources of recyclers' paperwork.
As one claim reviewer wrote after checking with an L.A. handler who sold e-waste to SIMS last year: "Call to Issac with Cal-E. He stated almost all peddlers on logs are illegal aliens who cannot read or write. He reconstructs the logs from their pieces of paper (and) napkins."
Such discoveries, though, typically come months after monitors and televisions have been dismantled and recycled, leaving investigators with more questions than evidence.
"There is really no corpse to look at like with a murder," said Mahan, the e-waste fraud chief. "It's all paperwork."
Buried in the blizzard of payment claims and e-mails lurk enough twists and turns to fill a John Grisham novel – without the convenient conclusions. Chapters end abruptly, stories change, numbers don't add up, recollections collide and cases evaporate.
Shopping spree in Arizona
At midday, small stones along the streets of Tucson, Ariz., glitter like silver and platinum in the hot sun. In recent years, Los Angeles e-waste collector Global Comp One has been active here, buying up thousands of unwanted monitors as if they, too, were precious metals.
"We purchase in quantities of any volume," the company's owner, Allen Baker, wrote in an April 8, 2009, letter soliciting material from Rise Equipment Recycling Center. "I am in Arizona bi-weekly and would welcome an opportunity to meet with you."
A year earlier, state officials had noted that Global Comp One was delivering monitors to Electronics Recyclers in Fresno and ARC International in Los Angeles with paperwork riddled with "disconnected phone numbers, wrong numbers (and) wrong contact names," state records show.
They also had fielded a tip that the collector was buying monitors in Colorado and redeeming them in California.
Though they had documented no wrongdoing, their concern was based on simple economics. In Tucson, for example, computer monitors sell for a dollar apiece, sometimes less, while California recyclers offer e-waste collectors around $8 to $10 apiece.
The state of California, in turn, pays recyclers about $15 to $18, depending on weight, to recycle them – but only if the waste comes from California.
Jeff Hunts, manager of the e-waste payment system at CalRecycle, had forwarded the Colorado tip to Mahan, urging him to take action.
"We need a big win," Hunts wrote.
Mahan had started investigating, but he didn't get far. "All the addresses we had for him, he had moved," Mahan said. "I would certainly like to know where I can get ahold of Mr. Baker."
Baker was not hard to find. The Bee tracked him down by phone recently in Southern California, where he said the state's concerns are well-founded – just not about him.
"The system is fraught with fraud," he said.
Baker said he buys monitors across America to refurbish and sell to buyers in other countries for $3.50 to $12 each. He no longer participates in California's recycling program, he said, but when he did he never intentionally redeemed out-of-state material.
"I'm not saying it's not possible that, because we're doing business intrastate and interstate, that something might have gotten mixed at one time," he said. But the state, Baker said, checked him out and "we were clean … We run a very tight ship."
Mahan said Baker has not been cleared at all. "We still have a lot of interest in talking to him," he said.
Where did monitors go?
Other mysterious cases unfold uncomfortably close to home.
Last December, six piles of used monitors from state agencies sat on pallets in the warehouse near Arco Arena where the state auctions off its own electronic discards.
There were charcoal-black HPs, just 3 years old, milky-white View-Sonics, manufactured in 1997 and a real antique: a Packard Bell, vintage 1989.
No one wanted them – except Farrah Philip, a buyer for KYO Computer, a Bay Area recycler with a history of run-ins with the state, from violations of state environmental regulations to $400,000 in rejected e-waste claims.
But unlike Global Comp in Arizona, KYO paid a premium for the monitors at auction that day – about $14 apiece.
CalRecycle officials were not aware that KYO had attended the auction and, when informed of the price paid, they were mystified. How could KYO make a profit?
Eight days later, The Bee tracked the monitors back to KYO's warehouse in industrial Newark, in southern Alameda County, to see what was up. There, the trail went cold.
As trucks rumbled by outside, Philip insisted the purchase made sense. The state, she said, would pay her 39 cents a pound for the monitors to be recycled, at least $15 each. Even after paying another firm to process the glass, she could make money off the copper and plastic.
And because these monitors obviously were from California, there would be no challenge to her logbooks' veracity. "The state knows this came from them," she said.
Could we see the 108 monitors from Sacramento? That would not be possible, Philip said, because they had already been dismantled, their glass tubes shipped to the nearest glass recycler in Oregon.
In the wake of the auction, CalRecycle has launched an internal audit of KYO to scrutinize its e-waste. In such audits, one scenario the agency must rule out involves shipping working monitors overseas for resale, then backfilling those spots for state recycling reimbursement with out-of-state or other ineligible monitors.
Reached recently at her office, Philip said she was not aware of the audit. Asked again about the December auction purchase, her story changed. She said KYO did lose money on those monitors after all; she had bought them to keep workers busy while searching for cheaper units.
Philip declined to discuss details.
"This is secret, confidential," she said. "We cannot share (with) everybody."
Tough talk, no prosecutions
Recycling fraud was among many topics quietly debated in the summer of 2008, when state and industry officials met in Los Angeles to discuss the program's flaws.
"We need a bill to be introduced that will fix the e-waste program," say official notes of the meeting obtained by The Bee.
Ideas filled the room: better tracking, more transparency, tougher enforcement of fraud, stricter standards for collectors – and shifting the job of recycling to manufacturers.
"Producer responsibility makes more sense," the notes say. "You built it, you take care of it."
Two years later, not much has happened.
"The enforcement is there, but we could do better than what we are doing," said Gary Petersen, a former California Integrated Waste Board member who called the meeting. "There are bad people out there. We've got to make sure those guys get caught."
Mahan, who has tried to catch them for two years, said 26 investigations have been launched. Five were strong enough to forward to criminal investigators in his department; two have been referred to the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office and the state attorney general's office.
To date, there have been no prosecutions, penalties or fines. But there is plenty of pent-up anger and finger-pointing.
"Clearly DTSC has not made this their priority," said one senior state e-waste official, speaking on condition of anonymity. "Why are they not picking up these things and running with them?"
Mahan said part of the problem lies with his department's regulations, which are "geared to enforcing environmental violations, not financial things."
CalRecycle's Hunts counts himself among the frustrated.
"It's tough to get a DA or the AG interested in recycling crime," Hunts said. "It's not sexy. It's not going to get anybody re-elected."
Another case has been referred to the Santa Clara County District Attorney's Office, according to one state official. But Ken Rosenblatt, a supervising district attorney for environmental protection in Santa Clara, refused to talk about it.
"I'm afraid I just don't have any information on that subject for you," Rosenblatt said.
In lieu of prosecutions, Hunts said the state's most effective strategy has been denying payments on bad claims – a process that has pushed some out of business.
But The Bee found that several companies docked for large volumes of suspect claims remain active.
That includes Tung Tai Group, a San Jose recycler that had 38 percent of its claims – $1.6 million in all – rejected over the past two years and is under investigation by the state.
John Chen, Tung Tai's executive vice president, said his firm fell victim to unscrupulous e-waste collectors: "A lot of it was not having proper logs – not fraudulent logs – and not understanding what our mistakes were."
Chen complained that the state took months to inform his company about problems and rejected many claims for minor paperwork infractions.
Overall, Chen said he believes CalRecycle is improperly denying millions of dollars of legitimate e-waste. Because recyclers pay for the waste months before the state rules on claims, they are the ones who suffer the financial consequences, he said.
Others feel too much attention is devoted to the provenance of e-waste, not enough to the importance of recycling.
Beyond basic ethical concerns, Mark Murray, executive director of Californians Against Waste, said out-of-state waste getting recycled in California is no big deal.
"Frankly I'm glad that there is a recycling opportunity for that waste so that hazardous material isn't getting illegally dumped," Murray said.
Recyclers with good track records, though, are unhappy with the lack of action against scofflaws. Paul Gao, president of California Electronic Asset Recovery, east of Sacramento, has had less than one half of one percent of his claims turned down since 2005.
"We try our best," Gao said. "Why can they not prosecute somebody?"
Part of the problem may lie in the DNA of California's e-waste recycling program, in particular its reliance on tedious after-the-fact verification, and its focus on documenting minute volumes of waste.
"Focusing on fraudulent activities like shipping truckloads of (monitors) in from other states is imperative to keeping our program honest," Gao said.
Instead, he said, the state often insists recyclers track down and produce documentation for just a few monitors at a time.
"The program could be run better," Gao said. "You have to catch these bad guys."
tknudson@sacbee.com
PUBLISHED SUNDAY, JUL. 18, 2010
It seemed a perfect symmetry: California, the world's high-tech capital, would lead the way in recycling the debris of our digital revolution.
But five years after its launch, the state government-run electronic waste program stands out not as a model of the green innovation for which California is famous but as an example of good intentions gone awry.
By paying more than $320 million to collect and recycle computer monitors and televisions, the state has built a magnet for fraud totaling tens of millions of dollars, including illegal material smuggled in from out of state.
"I don't think anybody could have forecast the greed that has poisoned the program," said Bob Erie, chief executive officer of E-World Recyclers north of San Diego and once an enthusiastic supporter of the state effort.
None of the many states that followed California took on e-waste recycling as a government program; instead they made industry responsible for its own waste.
California officials have long been aware of the problems with their approach, too; they met with recycling industry officials two years ago at a private club in Los Angeles to discuss solutions, including whether the state should be in the e-waste business at all.
But nothing has changed. Instead, The Bee found:
• Recyclers and collectors have submitted $23 million in faulty and fraudulent e-waste claims that have been rejected by the state. But state and industry officials estimate that other ineligible claims, totaling as much as $30 million, may have inadvertently been paid.
• More than two dozen e-waste firms have been investigated for fraud by the state Department of Toxic Substances Control over the past two years, but none has been fined or prosecuted.
• Even though California officials know that illegal e-waste is flowing into the state – and acknowledge that public funds are being wasted recycling some of it – no state official has traveled out of state to investigate.
A new California Gold Rush
Truck after truck drops its load of electronic garbage at ECS Refining, one of the state's best-known e-waste recyclers based in the heart of Silicon Valley.
Until it is fed into two ear-piercing shredders, the pyramid of printers, fax machines, keyboards, CD players and telephones serves as a monument to our electronic obsession.
Not far away, some of the heaviest, most hazardous material also piles up: computer monitors and TVs – both of which contain significant amounts of lead. Each year Californians discard about 3.3 million of them, 9,200 a day on average.
Those larger items are the targets of California's e-waste recycling program, which began Jan. 1, 2005. Six million unwanted monitors and TVs that had no value on New Year's Eve turned into green gold overnight.
The goal of the law was to prevent lead-laden glass tubes from winding up in landfills while jump-starting a green industry to collect and recycle the castoffs. At that, it has been a resounding success.
So far some 840 million pounds of monitors and TVs, about 17 million units, have been recycled in California, far more than in any other state.
"It's easy to throw stones, but the hard numbers on what we've recycled as a state are astonishing," said John Shegerian, chief executive officer of Electronic Recyclers International.
His firm, based in Fresno, is the largest monitor and TV recycler in the state. But that distinction bears a footnote: The state has rejected $2.7 million of ERI's claims, mostly in 2008 and 2009, state records show.
"I am not happy about it. I am not proud of it," said Shegerian, blaming tougher state scrutiny of e-waste sources for the denials. "That was a black period. And financially it hurt."
California's electronic waste recycling system could be likened to a gigantic river. At the mouth of the waterway are some 60 recyclers who tear apart TVs and monitors for copper, steel, plastic and other components.
Upstream are more than 500 collectors, who funnel e-waste to recyclers. Farther upstream are handlers – scavengers and peddlers – who round up material to sell to the collectors.
Overseeing the flow are two agencies: CalRecycle, which scrutinizes claims and pays recyclers, and the Department of Toxic Substances Control, which investigates fraud and environmental violations.
Funding it all are state consumers, through an $8 to $25 fee on the purchase of new monitors and televisions.
At the program's inception, with hundreds of millions of dollars in state payments up for grabs, companies seemed to appear out of nowhere.
"It was the second coming of the California Gold Rush," said Erie, the Southern California recycler. "They came from Texas. They came from Pennsylvania. They came from all over the place and said, 'Let's open up in California because the government's paying money.' "
That frenzy caught the state off guard. Faulty and fraudulent claims of $1.9 million the first year climbed to $6.8 million in 2008 and to $9.8 million last year; overall the state has rejected payment on 6.5 percent of all claims – $22.6 million out of $347 million.
Unknown is how many ineligible claims have escaped notice. "If you are going to hold me to a number, add probably another 10 percent for the stuff that got through," said Jeff Mahan, chief of the e-waste fraud unit at the toxic substances control department.
To qualify for payment, recyclers must document that monitors and TVs come from California. But the logbooks they give the state, with names and addresses of the original owners – provided by collectors and handlers who gathered the waste – frequently read like works of fiction.
There are bogus names, made-up addresses, dead people and Hollywood celebrities. And there is brazenness by the truckload.
"I would find Dustin Hoffman's name, Robin Williams' name, Mike Tyson's name. It's just incredible," Mahan said.
Here's what one state official wrote after spot-checking a 2009 claim from SIMS Recycling Solutions headquarters in Roseville seeking $482,000 for 1.2 million pounds of e-waste delivered to its Southern California plant:
"100% of the sources contacted stated they DND (did not discard) … The last names appear to have been looked up in some sort of alphabetical directory … . Patterns of falsehood are obvious in these logs."
That entire $482,000 claim was rejected. In all, the state has turned down $4.5 million in e-waste claims from SIMS, the most in the state.
SIMS has appealed the denials. But its president, Steve Skurnac, acknowledged that his firm should have screened names more carefully.
"The onus is on us to prove that it's qualified material," Skurnac added. "We understand that."
Other surprises emerged as the state learned about the scramble for e-waste on the streets of Los Angeles and San Francisco – and the sources of recyclers' paperwork.
As one claim reviewer wrote after checking with an L.A. handler who sold e-waste to SIMS last year: "Call to Issac with Cal-E. He stated almost all peddlers on logs are illegal aliens who cannot read or write. He reconstructs the logs from their pieces of paper (and) napkins."
Such discoveries, though, typically come months after monitors and televisions have been dismantled and recycled, leaving investigators with more questions than evidence.
"There is really no corpse to look at like with a murder," said Mahan, the e-waste fraud chief. "It's all paperwork."
Buried in the blizzard of payment claims and e-mails lurk enough twists and turns to fill a John Grisham novel – without the convenient conclusions. Chapters end abruptly, stories change, numbers don't add up, recollections collide and cases evaporate.
Shopping spree in Arizona
At midday, small stones along the streets of Tucson, Ariz., glitter like silver and platinum in the hot sun. In recent years, Los Angeles e-waste collector Global Comp One has been active here, buying up thousands of unwanted monitors as if they, too, were precious metals.
"We purchase in quantities of any volume," the company's owner, Allen Baker, wrote in an April 8, 2009, letter soliciting material from Rise Equipment Recycling Center. "I am in Arizona bi-weekly and would welcome an opportunity to meet with you."
A year earlier, state officials had noted that Global Comp One was delivering monitors to Electronics Recyclers in Fresno and ARC International in Los Angeles with paperwork riddled with "disconnected phone numbers, wrong numbers (and) wrong contact names," state records show.
They also had fielded a tip that the collector was buying monitors in Colorado and redeeming them in California.
Though they had documented no wrongdoing, their concern was based on simple economics. In Tucson, for example, computer monitors sell for a dollar apiece, sometimes less, while California recyclers offer e-waste collectors around $8 to $10 apiece.
The state of California, in turn, pays recyclers about $15 to $18, depending on weight, to recycle them – but only if the waste comes from California.
Jeff Hunts, manager of the e-waste payment system at CalRecycle, had forwarded the Colorado tip to Mahan, urging him to take action.
"We need a big win," Hunts wrote.
Mahan had started investigating, but he didn't get far. "All the addresses we had for him, he had moved," Mahan said. "I would certainly like to know where I can get ahold of Mr. Baker."
Baker was not hard to find. The Bee tracked him down by phone recently in Southern California, where he said the state's concerns are well-founded – just not about him.
"The system is fraught with fraud," he said.
Baker said he buys monitors across America to refurbish and sell to buyers in other countries for $3.50 to $12 each. He no longer participates in California's recycling program, he said, but when he did he never intentionally redeemed out-of-state material.
"I'm not saying it's not possible that, because we're doing business intrastate and interstate, that something might have gotten mixed at one time," he said. But the state, Baker said, checked him out and "we were clean … We run a very tight ship."
Mahan said Baker has not been cleared at all. "We still have a lot of interest in talking to him," he said.
Where did monitors go?
Other mysterious cases unfold uncomfortably close to home.
Last December, six piles of used monitors from state agencies sat on pallets in the warehouse near Arco Arena where the state auctions off its own electronic discards.
There were charcoal-black HPs, just 3 years old, milky-white View-Sonics, manufactured in 1997 and a real antique: a Packard Bell, vintage 1989.
No one wanted them – except Farrah Philip, a buyer for KYO Computer, a Bay Area recycler with a history of run-ins with the state, from violations of state environmental regulations to $400,000 in rejected e-waste claims.
But unlike Global Comp in Arizona, KYO paid a premium for the monitors at auction that day – about $14 apiece.
CalRecycle officials were not aware that KYO had attended the auction and, when informed of the price paid, they were mystified. How could KYO make a profit?
Eight days later, The Bee tracked the monitors back to KYO's warehouse in industrial Newark, in southern Alameda County, to see what was up. There, the trail went cold.
As trucks rumbled by outside, Philip insisted the purchase made sense. The state, she said, would pay her 39 cents a pound for the monitors to be recycled, at least $15 each. Even after paying another firm to process the glass, she could make money off the copper and plastic.
And because these monitors obviously were from California, there would be no challenge to her logbooks' veracity. "The state knows this came from them," she said.
Could we see the 108 monitors from Sacramento? That would not be possible, Philip said, because they had already been dismantled, their glass tubes shipped to the nearest glass recycler in Oregon.
In the wake of the auction, CalRecycle has launched an internal audit of KYO to scrutinize its e-waste. In such audits, one scenario the agency must rule out involves shipping working monitors overseas for resale, then backfilling those spots for state recycling reimbursement with out-of-state or other ineligible monitors.
Reached recently at her office, Philip said she was not aware of the audit. Asked again about the December auction purchase, her story changed. She said KYO did lose money on those monitors after all; she had bought them to keep workers busy while searching for cheaper units.
Philip declined to discuss details.
"This is secret, confidential," she said. "We cannot share (with) everybody."
Tough talk, no prosecutions
Recycling fraud was among many topics quietly debated in the summer of 2008, when state and industry officials met in Los Angeles to discuss the program's flaws.
"We need a bill to be introduced that will fix the e-waste program," say official notes of the meeting obtained by The Bee.
Ideas filled the room: better tracking, more transparency, tougher enforcement of fraud, stricter standards for collectors – and shifting the job of recycling to manufacturers.
"Producer responsibility makes more sense," the notes say. "You built it, you take care of it."
Two years later, not much has happened.
"The enforcement is there, but we could do better than what we are doing," said Gary Petersen, a former California Integrated Waste Board member who called the meeting. "There are bad people out there. We've got to make sure those guys get caught."
Mahan, who has tried to catch them for two years, said 26 investigations have been launched. Five were strong enough to forward to criminal investigators in his department; two have been referred to the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office and the state attorney general's office.
To date, there have been no prosecutions, penalties or fines. But there is plenty of pent-up anger and finger-pointing.
"Clearly DTSC has not made this their priority," said one senior state e-waste official, speaking on condition of anonymity. "Why are they not picking up these things and running with them?"
Mahan said part of the problem lies with his department's regulations, which are "geared to enforcing environmental violations, not financial things."
CalRecycle's Hunts counts himself among the frustrated.
"It's tough to get a DA or the AG interested in recycling crime," Hunts said. "It's not sexy. It's not going to get anybody re-elected."
Another case has been referred to the Santa Clara County District Attorney's Office, according to one state official. But Ken Rosenblatt, a supervising district attorney for environmental protection in Santa Clara, refused to talk about it.
"I'm afraid I just don't have any information on that subject for you," Rosenblatt said.
In lieu of prosecutions, Hunts said the state's most effective strategy has been denying payments on bad claims – a process that has pushed some out of business.
But The Bee found that several companies docked for large volumes of suspect claims remain active.
That includes Tung Tai Group, a San Jose recycler that had 38 percent of its claims – $1.6 million in all – rejected over the past two years and is under investigation by the state.
John Chen, Tung Tai's executive vice president, said his firm fell victim to unscrupulous e-waste collectors: "A lot of it was not having proper logs – not fraudulent logs – and not understanding what our mistakes were."
Chen complained that the state took months to inform his company about problems and rejected many claims for minor paperwork infractions.
Overall, Chen said he believes CalRecycle is improperly denying millions of dollars of legitimate e-waste. Because recyclers pay for the waste months before the state rules on claims, they are the ones who suffer the financial consequences, he said.
Others feel too much attention is devoted to the provenance of e-waste, not enough to the importance of recycling.
Beyond basic ethical concerns, Mark Murray, executive director of Californians Against Waste, said out-of-state waste getting recycled in California is no big deal.
"Frankly I'm glad that there is a recycling opportunity for that waste so that hazardous material isn't getting illegally dumped," Murray said.
Recyclers with good track records, though, are unhappy with the lack of action against scofflaws. Paul Gao, president of California Electronic Asset Recovery, east of Sacramento, has had less than one half of one percent of his claims turned down since 2005.
"We try our best," Gao said. "Why can they not prosecute somebody?"
Part of the problem may lie in the DNA of California's e-waste recycling program, in particular its reliance on tedious after-the-fact verification, and its focus on documenting minute volumes of waste.
"Focusing on fraudulent activities like shipping truckloads of (monitors) in from other states is imperative to keeping our program honest," Gao said.
Instead, he said, the state often insists recyclers track down and produce documentation for just a few monitors at a time.
"The program could be run better," Gao said. "You have to catch these bad guys."
Friday, July 16, 2010
Malaysia's Daily Express Says
INDEPENDENT NATIONAL NEWSPAPER OF EAST MALAYSIA
Established since 1963
Proper way to manage e-waste needed: Masidi
Published on: Friday, July 16, 2010
Kota Kinabalu: Tourism, Culture and Environment Minister, Datuk Masidi Manjun proposed a brainstorming meeting between all the local authorities in Sabah to find ways to properly manage electronic waste (e-waste) in their respective areas.
"Maybe the Local Government and Housing Ministry could have a meeting with all the Municipal Councils or District Councils (among others) to plan a proper way to manage e-waste," he said when opening the Seminar on E-Waste here on Thursday.
To take efforts on handling such wastes in Sabah a notch further, he reiterated the idea of a scheme to buy back equipment no longer used, a roundtable discussion with telecommunication companies on how to manage e-waste and also a law overseeing e-waste management.
Although acknowledging that managing e-waste has yet to get off the ground in the State, he pointed out that it was better to start now than later.
"We're still in the initial stage but it's good we start early because the implications on the environment and health are serious," Masidi said, adding they are trying to learn from Perak, which has legislation on e-waste management and also an understanding with telcos on e-waste, among others.
"What we're trying to do has already been done in Perak where the State and telcos work together to manage and dispose e-wastes because they are the best people to do this as they have the expertise and know-how.
"The buyback scheme would also be good (to complement the effort) where those wanting to buy new mobile phones (for instance) must handover the old ones instead of discarding them and at the same time the government can introduce tax exemptions as incentives.
"For instance, there were 41,776 mobile phones recorded in Sabah in 1999 and the number had grown to almost 20 times at 752, 000 at the end of 2008 including discarded phones, he added.
"And if there is a need we will see to it to have a law for e-waste but the approach is not towards penalising but rather awareness because like any other law, if the people don't understand the law will not be effective," he said.
Towards this end, Perak Executive Council member, Datuk Hamidah Osman said that is why this seminar was vital to inform the pubilc especially stakeholders of the dangers of ignoring the issue of e-waste.
"Many problems will occur if the problem is not handled smartly É there are many problems (associated with ignoring e-waste) but it has never been really exposed, so what the Sabah government is doing is very good.
"Firstly to create public awareness É it is not enough if only the Government or enforcement is in the picture because the public are actually the ones (directly) dealing with the matter," she said.
She had earlier presented a paper called "Efforts to Implement E-Waste Management in Perak".
Meanwhile, Masidi welcomed other companies to transport e-waste from Sabah to disposal sites.
"If there are others, we are more than happy É we will also consider if there are companies willing to do everything (from collection to disposal)," he said, adding, however, there are not many companies able to do so.
Department of Environment Sabah Director, Hj Razak Abdul Manap said Petrojadi Sdn Bhd is the only company licensed by the department to handle e-waste because they are the only one with the capability to do so.
He said the company would temporarily place the e-waste in a container, due to difficulties finding a location for an off-site storage, before shipping the wastes to the final disposal site at Syarikat Kualiti Alam Sdn Bhd in Negeri Sembilan.
"We welcome other transporter companies if they have such facilities (off-site storage)."
Participants at the seminar comprised environmental officers (administrators and engineers) involved in solid waste management from the public sector, non-governmental organisations, institutions of higher learning and representatives from the private sector.
It is jointly organised by the Environmental Action Centre, Environment Protection Department, Department of Environment, Telecoms Malaysia, Computer Services Department and City Hall.
Established since 1963
Proper way to manage e-waste needed: Masidi
Published on: Friday, July 16, 2010
Kota Kinabalu: Tourism, Culture and Environment Minister, Datuk Masidi Manjun proposed a brainstorming meeting between all the local authorities in Sabah to find ways to properly manage electronic waste (e-waste) in their respective areas.
"Maybe the Local Government and Housing Ministry could have a meeting with all the Municipal Councils or District Councils (among others) to plan a proper way to manage e-waste," he said when opening the Seminar on E-Waste here on Thursday.
To take efforts on handling such wastes in Sabah a notch further, he reiterated the idea of a scheme to buy back equipment no longer used, a roundtable discussion with telecommunication companies on how to manage e-waste and also a law overseeing e-waste management.
Although acknowledging that managing e-waste has yet to get off the ground in the State, he pointed out that it was better to start now than later.
"We're still in the initial stage but it's good we start early because the implications on the environment and health are serious," Masidi said, adding they are trying to learn from Perak, which has legislation on e-waste management and also an understanding with telcos on e-waste, among others.
"What we're trying to do has already been done in Perak where the State and telcos work together to manage and dispose e-wastes because they are the best people to do this as they have the expertise and know-how.
"The buyback scheme would also be good (to complement the effort) where those wanting to buy new mobile phones (for instance) must handover the old ones instead of discarding them and at the same time the government can introduce tax exemptions as incentives.
"For instance, there were 41,776 mobile phones recorded in Sabah in 1999 and the number had grown to almost 20 times at 752, 000 at the end of 2008 including discarded phones, he added.
"And if there is a need we will see to it to have a law for e-waste but the approach is not towards penalising but rather awareness because like any other law, if the people don't understand the law will not be effective," he said.
Towards this end, Perak Executive Council member, Datuk Hamidah Osman said that is why this seminar was vital to inform the pubilc especially stakeholders of the dangers of ignoring the issue of e-waste.
"Many problems will occur if the problem is not handled smartly É there are many problems (associated with ignoring e-waste) but it has never been really exposed, so what the Sabah government is doing is very good.
"Firstly to create public awareness É it is not enough if only the Government or enforcement is in the picture because the public are actually the ones (directly) dealing with the matter," she said.
She had earlier presented a paper called "Efforts to Implement E-Waste Management in Perak".
Meanwhile, Masidi welcomed other companies to transport e-waste from Sabah to disposal sites.
"If there are others, we are more than happy É we will also consider if there are companies willing to do everything (from collection to disposal)," he said, adding, however, there are not many companies able to do so.
Department of Environment Sabah Director, Hj Razak Abdul Manap said Petrojadi Sdn Bhd is the only company licensed by the department to handle e-waste because they are the only one with the capability to do so.
He said the company would temporarily place the e-waste in a container, due to difficulties finding a location for an off-site storage, before shipping the wastes to the final disposal site at Syarikat Kualiti Alam Sdn Bhd in Negeri Sembilan.
"We welcome other transporter companies if they have such facilities (off-site storage)."
Participants at the seminar comprised environmental officers (administrators and engineers) involved in solid waste management from the public sector, non-governmental organisations, institutions of higher learning and representatives from the private sector.
It is jointly organised by the Environmental Action Centre, Environment Protection Department, Department of Environment, Telecoms Malaysia, Computer Services Department and City Hall.
Thursday, July 8, 2010
more on ragpickers
India's poor risk 'slow death' recycling 'e-waste'
AFPJULY 7, 2010
NEW DELHI — Young rag-pickers sifting through rubbish are a common image of India's chronic poverty, but destitute children face new hazards picking apart old computers as part of the growing "e-waste" industry.
Asif, aged seven, spends his days dismantling electronic equipment in a tiny, dimly-lit unit in east Delhi along with six other boys.
"My work is to pick out these small black boxes," he said, fingers deftly prising out integrated circuits from the pile of computer remains stacked high beside him.
His older brother Salim, 12, is also hard at work instead of being at school. He is extracting tiny transistors and capacitors from wire boards.
The brothers, who decline to reveal how much they earn a day, say they are kept frantically busy as increasing numbers of computers, printers and other electronic goods are discarded by offices and homes.
Few statistics are known about the informal "e-waste" industry, but a United Nations report launched in February described how mountains of hazardous waste from electronic products are growing exponentially in developing countries.
It said India would have 500 percent more e-waste from old computers in 2020 than in 2007, and 18 times more old mobile phones.
The risks posed to those who handle the cast-offs are clear to T.K. Joshi, head of the Centre for Occupational and Environmental Health at the Maulana Azad Medical College in New Delhi.
He studied 250 people working in the city as recyclers and dismantlers over 12 months to October 2009 and found almost all suffered from breathing problems such as asthma and bronchitis.
"We found dangerously high levels -- 10 to 20 times higher than normal -- of lead, mercury and chromium in blood and urine samples," he told AFP.
"All these have a detrimental effect on the respiratory, urinary and digestive systems, besides crippling immunity and causing cancer."
Toxic metals and poisons enter workers' bloodstreams during the laborious manual extraction process and when equipment is crudely treated to collect tiny quantities of precious metals.
"The recovery of metals like gold, platinum, copper and lead uses caustic soda and concentrated acids," said Joshi.
"Workers dip their hands in poisonous chemicals for long hours. They are also exposed to fumes of highly concentrated acid."
Safety gear such as gloves, face masks and ventilation fans are virtually unheard of, and workers -- many of them children -- often have little idea of what they are handling.
"All the workers we surveyed were unaware of the dangers they were exposed to. They were all illiterate and desperate for employment," said Joshi. "Their choice is clear -- either die of hunger or of metal poisoning."
And he warned exposure to e-waste by-products such as cadmium and lead could result in a slow, painful death.
"They can't sleep or walk," he said. "They are wasted by the time they reach 35-40 years of age and incapable of working."
There are no estimates of how many people die in India from e-waste poisoning as ill workers generally drift back to their villages when they can no longer earn a living.
"The irony is that the amounts of gold and platinum they extract are traces -- fractions of a milligramme," said Priti Mahesh, programme coordinator of the New Delhi-based Toxic Link environment group.
"Computers, televisions and mobile phones are most dangerous because they have high levels of lead, mercury and cadmium -- and they have short life-spans so are discarded more," she said.
The Indian government has proposed a law to regulate the e-waste trade, but Delhi environment group the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) said any legislation would miss the army of informal workers such as brothers Asif and Salim.
"The proposed law says only big firms should be in the business of recycling and dismantling," said Kushal Pal Singh Yadav, a CSE campaigner.
"This is not going to work because the informal sector already has a cheap system of collection, disposal or recycling in place -- so people will use that."
For Joshi, the sight of children working in appalling conditions taking computers apart is as potent a symbol of India's deep troubles as rag-pickers sorting through stinking household rubbish dumps.
"India needs laws which will protect workers' interests, especially the vulnerable and children. We have a lot to learn from Western societies about workers' rights," he said.
AFPJULY 7, 2010
NEW DELHI — Young rag-pickers sifting through rubbish are a common image of India's chronic poverty, but destitute children face new hazards picking apart old computers as part of the growing "e-waste" industry.
Asif, aged seven, spends his days dismantling electronic equipment in a tiny, dimly-lit unit in east Delhi along with six other boys.
"My work is to pick out these small black boxes," he said, fingers deftly prising out integrated circuits from the pile of computer remains stacked high beside him.
His older brother Salim, 12, is also hard at work instead of being at school. He is extracting tiny transistors and capacitors from wire boards.
The brothers, who decline to reveal how much they earn a day, say they are kept frantically busy as increasing numbers of computers, printers and other electronic goods are discarded by offices and homes.
Few statistics are known about the informal "e-waste" industry, but a United Nations report launched in February described how mountains of hazardous waste from electronic products are growing exponentially in developing countries.
It said India would have 500 percent more e-waste from old computers in 2020 than in 2007, and 18 times more old mobile phones.
The risks posed to those who handle the cast-offs are clear to T.K. Joshi, head of the Centre for Occupational and Environmental Health at the Maulana Azad Medical College in New Delhi.
He studied 250 people working in the city as recyclers and dismantlers over 12 months to October 2009 and found almost all suffered from breathing problems such as asthma and bronchitis.
"We found dangerously high levels -- 10 to 20 times higher than normal -- of lead, mercury and chromium in blood and urine samples," he told AFP.
"All these have a detrimental effect on the respiratory, urinary and digestive systems, besides crippling immunity and causing cancer."
Toxic metals and poisons enter workers' bloodstreams during the laborious manual extraction process and when equipment is crudely treated to collect tiny quantities of precious metals.
"The recovery of metals like gold, platinum, copper and lead uses caustic soda and concentrated acids," said Joshi.
"Workers dip their hands in poisonous chemicals for long hours. They are also exposed to fumes of highly concentrated acid."
Safety gear such as gloves, face masks and ventilation fans are virtually unheard of, and workers -- many of them children -- often have little idea of what they are handling.
"All the workers we surveyed were unaware of the dangers they were exposed to. They were all illiterate and desperate for employment," said Joshi. "Their choice is clear -- either die of hunger or of metal poisoning."
And he warned exposure to e-waste by-products such as cadmium and lead could result in a slow, painful death.
"They can't sleep or walk," he said. "They are wasted by the time they reach 35-40 years of age and incapable of working."
There are no estimates of how many people die in India from e-waste poisoning as ill workers generally drift back to their villages when they can no longer earn a living.
"The irony is that the amounts of gold and platinum they extract are traces -- fractions of a milligramme," said Priti Mahesh, programme coordinator of the New Delhi-based Toxic Link environment group.
"Computers, televisions and mobile phones are most dangerous because they have high levels of lead, mercury and cadmium -- and they have short life-spans so are discarded more," she said.
The Indian government has proposed a law to regulate the e-waste trade, but Delhi environment group the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) said any legislation would miss the army of informal workers such as brothers Asif and Salim.
"The proposed law says only big firms should be in the business of recycling and dismantling," said Kushal Pal Singh Yadav, a CSE campaigner.
"This is not going to work because the informal sector already has a cheap system of collection, disposal or recycling in place -- so people will use that."
For Joshi, the sight of children working in appalling conditions taking computers apart is as potent a symbol of India's deep troubles as rag-pickers sorting through stinking household rubbish dumps.
"India needs laws which will protect workers' interests, especially the vulnerable and children. We have a lot to learn from Western societies about workers' rights," he said.
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
more on grauniad and sustainability
good site
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sustainability/series/guardian-news-media-sustainability-report-2010+operations
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sustainability/series/guardian-news-media-sustainability-report-2010+operations
GRAUNIAD'S CLAIMS--HIGH BUT NOT MIGHTY
The Guardian's sustainability vision 2009
We want to be a leader on media sustainability and environmentally regenerative in our activities
guardian.co.uk, Monday 27 July 2009 18.56 BST
larger | smaller
Our vision is to be a leader on sustainability within the media industry and to be environmentally regenerative in our activities. Through our editorial coverage and business activities, we will demonstrate to readers, staff, advertisers, suppliers and our communities that Guardian News & Media is committed to enhancing society's ability to build a sustainable future.
Editorial
Clearly our greatest impact comes from informing and influencing our global audience. We will therefore build on our position as a recognised leader in the reporting of environmental and social justice issues, by providing the most comprehensive news coverage on subjects such as climate change, environmental degradation and social inequality.
These topics will be explored from the social, economic, political and scientific perspectives, both nationally and globally.
We will promote public debate and harness the power of our readers and users by creating online tools and projects that give them the opportunity to share knowledge and ideas, as well as encouraging them to make a difference, both as individuals and within their communities.
Social justice has always been at the heart of our journalism and we will consistently give a voice to disadvantaged communities around the world who are most affected by climate change.
Commercial
GNM's reputation puts us in a strong position to benefit from the growing trend in businesses moving towards a more sustainable future.
We will support our large existing clients in this endeavour as well as enable small and emerging companies to develop their markets.
We recognise that tensions can arise between our need for advertising revenues to sustain our business and being a medium for promoting consumption. Our role is neither to hector our readers nor to censor on their behalf. Our editorial coverage informs and influences our audience in their choices.
We will work with our readers and users to gain a deeper understanding of what products and services they want in this area, and use this knowledge to engage with our advertisers and sponsors on the issue of sustainability.
Operational
Our ambition is to be environmentally regenerative. We will investigate how we can become carbon positive – go beyond carbon neutral and positively affect climate change.
Our offices and print sites will be of the highest environmental standards and we commit to minimising waste and maximising both efficiency and recycling. We will avoid unnecessary energy use, reduce our energy consumption where possible, use renewables and only offset emissions where there are no real alternatives.
Sustainability will be at the heart of our procurement processes as we recognise that our suppliers represent a key part of our operational impact.
We will consistently increase the amount of recycled and certified virgin newsprint in our products and will work across the industry to minimise the ecological footprint of paper supply and newspaper distribution.
People
We will empower and inspire everyone who works at GNM to act by encouraging sustainable behaviour. We will achieve this through leadership, raising awareness and incentives. At our new offices in Kings Cross, our working culture will aim to minimise waste and we will make it easy for all of us to act responsibly. We will also work in partnership with our local and global communities to address their social and environmental needs, by highlighting the issues and providing volunteering, resources and funding.
• Our vision was agreed by the board in 2007 and any changes are signed off by directors. The last revision was in 2008, strengthening the community component and also committing to be a leader in the media sector
Definitions
There is no universal definition of sustainability, which for many companies has become the accepted term for what previously was known as corporate social responsibility. So we felt it was important to be clear on our interpretation and also to define what we mean by our ambitious aim to become environmentally regenerative.
Sustainable development
We have developed our definition from the Brundtland Commission:* sustainable development is development that meets our present needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet theirs. This gives us, as individuals and collectively as a business, a shared responsibility for our impact on the environment as well as confronting and addressing social injustice within our local and global communities.
Environmentally regenerative
GNM has a vision to be environmentally regenerative, which for us means ensuring there is a net decrease in atmospheric gases that contribute to climate change resulting from the existence of our company. This long-term goal means not only dealing with our direct emissions but also those from the products and services we consume.
Alongside this, we will continue to concentrate our editorial resources on informing and influencing our audiences around the world to minimise their own environmental footprint, and to challenge the political and economic structures that lead to unsustainable behaviour.
We will work with communities both locally and in the developing world to deepen their knowledge and understanding of sustainability and reduce their own environmental footprints.
*Our Common Future, published by Oxford University Press in 1987.
We want to be a leader on media sustainability and environmentally regenerative in our activities
guardian.co.uk, Monday 27 July 2009 18.56 BST
larger | smaller
Our vision is to be a leader on sustainability within the media industry and to be environmentally regenerative in our activities. Through our editorial coverage and business activities, we will demonstrate to readers, staff, advertisers, suppliers and our communities that Guardian News & Media is committed to enhancing society's ability to build a sustainable future.
Editorial
Clearly our greatest impact comes from informing and influencing our global audience. We will therefore build on our position as a recognised leader in the reporting of environmental and social justice issues, by providing the most comprehensive news coverage on subjects such as climate change, environmental degradation and social inequality.
These topics will be explored from the social, economic, political and scientific perspectives, both nationally and globally.
We will promote public debate and harness the power of our readers and users by creating online tools and projects that give them the opportunity to share knowledge and ideas, as well as encouraging them to make a difference, both as individuals and within their communities.
Social justice has always been at the heart of our journalism and we will consistently give a voice to disadvantaged communities around the world who are most affected by climate change.
Commercial
GNM's reputation puts us in a strong position to benefit from the growing trend in businesses moving towards a more sustainable future.
We will support our large existing clients in this endeavour as well as enable small and emerging companies to develop their markets.
We recognise that tensions can arise between our need for advertising revenues to sustain our business and being a medium for promoting consumption. Our role is neither to hector our readers nor to censor on their behalf. Our editorial coverage informs and influences our audience in their choices.
We will work with our readers and users to gain a deeper understanding of what products and services they want in this area, and use this knowledge to engage with our advertisers and sponsors on the issue of sustainability.
Operational
Our ambition is to be environmentally regenerative. We will investigate how we can become carbon positive – go beyond carbon neutral and positively affect climate change.
Our offices and print sites will be of the highest environmental standards and we commit to minimising waste and maximising both efficiency and recycling. We will avoid unnecessary energy use, reduce our energy consumption where possible, use renewables and only offset emissions where there are no real alternatives.
Sustainability will be at the heart of our procurement processes as we recognise that our suppliers represent a key part of our operational impact.
We will consistently increase the amount of recycled and certified virgin newsprint in our products and will work across the industry to minimise the ecological footprint of paper supply and newspaper distribution.
People
We will empower and inspire everyone who works at GNM to act by encouraging sustainable behaviour. We will achieve this through leadership, raising awareness and incentives. At our new offices in Kings Cross, our working culture will aim to minimise waste and we will make it easy for all of us to act responsibly. We will also work in partnership with our local and global communities to address their social and environmental needs, by highlighting the issues and providing volunteering, resources and funding.
• Our vision was agreed by the board in 2007 and any changes are signed off by directors. The last revision was in 2008, strengthening the community component and also committing to be a leader in the media sector
Definitions
There is no universal definition of sustainability, which for many companies has become the accepted term for what previously was known as corporate social responsibility. So we felt it was important to be clear on our interpretation and also to define what we mean by our ambitious aim to become environmentally regenerative.
Sustainable development
We have developed our definition from the Brundtland Commission:* sustainable development is development that meets our present needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet theirs. This gives us, as individuals and collectively as a business, a shared responsibility for our impact on the environment as well as confronting and addressing social injustice within our local and global communities.
Environmentally regenerative
GNM has a vision to be environmentally regenerative, which for us means ensuring there is a net decrease in atmospheric gases that contribute to climate change resulting from the existence of our company. This long-term goal means not only dealing with our direct emissions but also those from the products and services we consume.
Alongside this, we will continue to concentrate our editorial resources on informing and influencing our audiences around the world to minimise their own environmental footprint, and to challenge the political and economic structures that lead to unsustainable behaviour.
We will work with communities both locally and in the developing world to deepen their knowledge and understanding of sustainability and reduce their own environmental footprints.
*Our Common Future, published by Oxford University Press in 1987.
MORE RAGPICKER ABJECTION--from economic times
India's rag-pickers at new risks from e-wastes
6 Jul 2010, 0954 hrs IST,
Topics:
united nationsMaulana Azad Medical CollegeOccupational and Environmental HealthToxic Link
NEW DELHI: Young rag-pickers sifting through rubbish are a common image of India's chronic poverty, but destitute children face new hazards picking apart old computers as part of the growing "e-waste" industry.
Asif, aged seven, spends his days dismantling electronic equipment in a tiny, dimly-lit unit in east Delhi along with six other boys.
"My work is to pick out these small black boxes," he said, fingers deftly prising out integrated circuits from the pile of computer remains stacked high beside him.
His older brother Salim, 12, is also hard at work instead of being at school. He is extracting tiny transistors and capacitors from wire boards.
The brothers, who decline to reveal how much they earn a day, say they are kept frantically busy as increasing numbers of computers, printers and other electronic goods are discarded by offices and homes.
Few statistics are known about the informal "e-waste" industry, but a United Nations report launched in February described how mountains of hazardous waste from electronic products are growing exponentially in developing countries.
It said India would have 500 percent more e-waste from old computers in 2020 than in 2007, and 18 times more old mobile phones.
The risks posed to those who handle the cast-offs are clear to T.K. Joshi, head of the Centre for Occupational and Environmental Health at the Maulana Azad Medical College in New Delhi.
He studied 250 people working in the city as recyclers and dismantlers over 12 months to October 2009 and found almost all suffered from breathing problems such as asthma and bronchitis.
"We found dangerously high levels -- 10 to 20 times higher than normal -- of lead, mercury and chromium in blood and urine samples," he told AFP.
"All these have a detrimental effect on the respiratory, urinary and digestive systems, besides crippling immunity and causing cancer."
Toxic metals and poisons enter workers' bloodstreams during the laborious manual extraction process and when equipment is crudely treated to collect tiny quantities of precious metals.
"The recovery of metals like gold, platinum, copper and lead uses caustic soda and concentrated acids," said Joshi.
"Workers dip their hands in poisonous chemicals for long hours. They are also exposed to fumes of highly concentrated acid."
Safety gear such as gloves, face masks and ventilation fans are virtually unheard of, and workers -- many of them children -- often have little idea of what they are handling.
"All the workers we surveyed were unaware of the dangers they were exposed to. They were all illiterate and desperate for employment," said Joshi. "Their choice is clear -- either die of hunger or of metal poisoning."
And he warned exposure to e-waste by-products such as cadmium and lead could result in a slow, painful death.
"They can't sleep or walk," he said. "They are wasted by the time they reach 35-40 years of age and incapable of working."
There are no estimates of how many people die in India from e-waste poisoning as ill workers generally drift back to their villages when they can no longer earn a living.
"The irony is that the amounts of gold and platinum they extract are traces -- fractions of a milligramme," said Priti Mahesh, programme coordinator of the New Delhi-based Toxic Link environment group.
"Computers, televisions and mobile phones are most dangerous because they have high levels of lead, mercury and cadmium -- and they have short life-spans so are discarded more," she said.
The Indian government has proposed a law to regulate the e-waste trade, but Delhi environment group the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) said any legislation would miss the army of informal workers such as brothers Asif and Salim.
"The proposed law says only big firms should be in the business of recycling and dismantling," said Kushal Pal Singh Yadav, a CSE campaigner.
"This is not going to work because the informal sector already has a cheap system of collection, disposal or recycling in place -- so people will use that."
For Joshi, the sight of children working in appalling conditions taking computers apart is as potent a symbol of India's deep troubles as rag-pickers sorting through stinking household rubbish dumps.
"India needs laws which will protect workers' interests, especially the vulnerable and children. We have a lot to learn from Western societies about workers' rights," he said.
6 Jul 2010, 0954 hrs IST,
Topics:
united nationsMaulana Azad Medical CollegeOccupational and Environmental HealthToxic Link
NEW DELHI: Young rag-pickers sifting through rubbish are a common image of India's chronic poverty, but destitute children face new hazards picking apart old computers as part of the growing "e-waste" industry.
Asif, aged seven, spends his days dismantling electronic equipment in a tiny, dimly-lit unit in east Delhi along with six other boys.
"My work is to pick out these small black boxes," he said, fingers deftly prising out integrated circuits from the pile of computer remains stacked high beside him.
His older brother Salim, 12, is also hard at work instead of being at school. He is extracting tiny transistors and capacitors from wire boards.
The brothers, who decline to reveal how much they earn a day, say they are kept frantically busy as increasing numbers of computers, printers and other electronic goods are discarded by offices and homes.
Few statistics are known about the informal "e-waste" industry, but a United Nations report launched in February described how mountains of hazardous waste from electronic products are growing exponentially in developing countries.
It said India would have 500 percent more e-waste from old computers in 2020 than in 2007, and 18 times more old mobile phones.
The risks posed to those who handle the cast-offs are clear to T.K. Joshi, head of the Centre for Occupational and Environmental Health at the Maulana Azad Medical College in New Delhi.
He studied 250 people working in the city as recyclers and dismantlers over 12 months to October 2009 and found almost all suffered from breathing problems such as asthma and bronchitis.
"We found dangerously high levels -- 10 to 20 times higher than normal -- of lead, mercury and chromium in blood and urine samples," he told AFP.
"All these have a detrimental effect on the respiratory, urinary and digestive systems, besides crippling immunity and causing cancer."
Toxic metals and poisons enter workers' bloodstreams during the laborious manual extraction process and when equipment is crudely treated to collect tiny quantities of precious metals.
"The recovery of metals like gold, platinum, copper and lead uses caustic soda and concentrated acids," said Joshi.
"Workers dip their hands in poisonous chemicals for long hours. They are also exposed to fumes of highly concentrated acid."
Safety gear such as gloves, face masks and ventilation fans are virtually unheard of, and workers -- many of them children -- often have little idea of what they are handling.
"All the workers we surveyed were unaware of the dangers they were exposed to. They were all illiterate and desperate for employment," said Joshi. "Their choice is clear -- either die of hunger or of metal poisoning."
And he warned exposure to e-waste by-products such as cadmium and lead could result in a slow, painful death.
"They can't sleep or walk," he said. "They are wasted by the time they reach 35-40 years of age and incapable of working."
There are no estimates of how many people die in India from e-waste poisoning as ill workers generally drift back to their villages when they can no longer earn a living.
"The irony is that the amounts of gold and platinum they extract are traces -- fractions of a milligramme," said Priti Mahesh, programme coordinator of the New Delhi-based Toxic Link environment group.
"Computers, televisions and mobile phones are most dangerous because they have high levels of lead, mercury and cadmium -- and they have short life-spans so are discarded more," she said.
The Indian government has proposed a law to regulate the e-waste trade, but Delhi environment group the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) said any legislation would miss the army of informal workers such as brothers Asif and Salim.
"The proposed law says only big firms should be in the business of recycling and dismantling," said Kushal Pal Singh Yadav, a CSE campaigner.
"This is not going to work because the informal sector already has a cheap system of collection, disposal or recycling in place -- so people will use that."
For Joshi, the sight of children working in appalling conditions taking computers apart is as potent a symbol of India's deep troubles as rag-pickers sorting through stinking household rubbish dumps.
"India needs laws which will protect workers' interests, especially the vulnerable and children. We have a lot to learn from Western societies about workers' rights," he said.
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