supported by a big number of other factors."
The ten categories of electronic waste
Australia regulates just categories 3 and 4:
1. Large household appliances (e.g. refrigerators, washing machines)
2. Small household appliances (e.g. vacuum cleaners, toasters, kettles)
3. IT and telecommunications equipment (e.g. computers, fax machines, phones)
4. Consumer equipment (e.g. radio sets, iPods, television sets)
5. Lighting equipment (e.g. luminaries, discharge lamps)
6. Electrical and electronic tools (with the exception of large-scale stationary industrial tools) (e.g. drills, saws)
7. Toys, leisure and sports equipment (e.g. treadmills, electronic cars)
8. Medical devices (with the exception of all implanted and infected products) (e.g. radiotherapy equipment, nuclear medicine)
9. Monitoring and control instruments (e.g. smoke detectors, heating regulators)
10. Automatic dispensers (e.g. drink dispensers)
Shipping e-waste offshore
Out of sight, out of mind has become the easy excuse for disposing of old electronic products. Shipping e-waste offshore is a serious problem, with significant environmental, humanitarian and economic implications. Over the past few years, non-accredited recyclers have been caught in Australia taking payments to recycle e-waste, then exporting the goods to developing countries such as Ghana, China, India, and Nigeria, at a low cost.
While this practice is illegal under the Basel Convention, signed in 1992, if the goods are labelled for reuse or in working order on customs documents, they become exempt making the export technically legal. The Basel Action Network, dedicated to monitoring compliance with the Convention, looked at the issue in a 2013 short documentary called Exporting Harm: The High-Tech Trashing of Asia.
When the e-waste arrives in a developing country, it is burned to easily remove plastic and other combustible materials, leaving behind the metals to be sold for cash.
In the rubbish dumps acting as workplaces for residents, safety is non-existent for these workers and the operation is totally unregulated. The burning heaps of electronic equipment see heaving masses of black toxic smoke billowing into the air. The Basel Action Network found in 2013 many Western nations attempt to justify the export as doing a service to empower developing nations take advantage of the digital age.
A second documentary, The Digital Dump: Exporting Re-use and Abuse to Africa, looked at the thousands of small pop-up computer repair businesses through Africa, often dealing with what were labelled 'junk electronics'. With few or no safety precautions, workers are often exposing themselves to dangerous, toxic chemicals while dismantling old equipment including lead, mercury, arsenic, cadmium, beryllium.
Beryllium, as one example, is a difficult element to extract from the earth with 90 per cent of the world's supply coming from Utah in the United States. Arsenic is a known carcinogen and lead poisoning can cause birth defects, learning difficulties, and severe interference with the nervous system.
These chemicals are finding their way into the water supply, and consequently, food crops in developing countries while the burning piles of e-waste are pumping noxious chemicals into the air.
Could a landfill be a gold mine? (Literally?)
Closer to home, some are realising the value of discarded materials from the days of dial-up modems. Ms Morris said digging up landfills may need to become an option in the near future to atone for lack of policy and simple carelessness of times past.
"The new research is saying that we're going to be mining our landfills in the next 10-20 years," Ms Morris said.
"All of the stuff that we've thrown in the bin and buried, we now have to go back and dig out because of past mistakes.
"Gold is so sparse in the earth's crust that when they're mining it, it costs more money to mine it out of the earth's crust than it does to get it out of the [discarded] mobile phones."
Inside televisions and computers, you can find gold selling for up to $50 a gram, platinum at $50 a gram, stainless steel at $2.50 a kilo, copper wire at up to $6 a kilo, and titanium at $4 a kilo. There isn't much in one machine, but multiply this by hundreds of thousands - even millions - and you can start to see the appeal.
What can you do to help?
How can you change your thinking and make sure the responsibility doesn't just fall with government, or with electronics manufacturers? Ms Morris said we need to be more conscious of the resources going in to the products we buy.
"We need to move toward the extended producer responsibility, where it's more of a policy design around how the system is thinking.
"[EPR] looks at the whole life cycle. It doesn't just place responsibility on a company once they've produced the product - it looks at how they can redesign that product from the get-go and how it performs within the system.
"If it does get to the point of end-of-life, is there a way to renew it, repair it, and bring it back into play?
"People's fear with that, and especially governments fear with that, is the economy. Right now, we make products to break.
"I spoke to Toshiba and they make their laptops to break within 3 years and most companies are doing the same, when they have the ability to make them last longer."
Whether you like it or not, Ms Morris stressed this is a problem for the current generation to address. She said e-waste recycling needs to be made simple and designed with the end result in mind, rather than achieving arbitrary targets or quotas.
"It's got to be simple. You've got to empower the stakeholders that need that empowerment, which are the local councils. They have that direct relationship with the public.
"They should be supported whether it is through funding, or other initiatives to want to educate the public on e-waste, and also provide services that are easy and accessible for consumer to engage with.
"It's good for young Australians particularly to really think about how we are as the younger generation and how we can improve and take care of our nation, and the world."
What device are you reading this on? Look at it. Look at the plastic, and the metals, and the cords attached to it. Where will it be in just a few years?
More from Stringer Press
Thank you for reading this essay from Stringer Press. Stringer Press is a hyperlocal journalism project in Logan, Queensland in Australia, working to get local journalism in the hands of marginalised communities, allowing them to be part of the media conversation, rather than just the subject of it.
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