Global perspectives on e-waste

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Abstract

Electronic waste, or e-waste, is an emerging problem as well as a business opportunity of increasing significance, given the volumes of e-waste being generated and the content of both toxic and valuable materials in them. The fraction including iron, copper, aluminium, gold and other metals in e-waste is over 60%, while pollutants comprise 2.70%. Given the high toxicity of these pollutants especially when burned or recycled in uncontrolled environments, the Basel Convention has identified e-waste as hazardous, and developed a framework for controls on transboundary movement of such waste. The Basel Ban, an amendment to the Basel Convention that has not yet come into force, would go one step further by prohibiting the export of e-waste from developed to industrializing countries.

Section 1 of this paper gives readers an overview on the e-waste topic—how e-waste is defined, what it is composed of and which methods can be applied to estimate the quantity of e-waste generated. Considering only PCs in use, by one estimate, at least 100 million PCs became obsolete in 2004. Not surprisingly, waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) today already constitutes 8% of municipal waste and is one of the fastest growing waste fractions.

Section 2 provides insight into the legislation and initiatives intended to help manage these growing quantities of e-waste. Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) is being propagated as a new paradigm in waste management. The European Union's WEEE Directive, which came into force in August of 2004, makes it incumbent on manufacturers and importers in EU states to take back their products from consumers and ensure environmentally sound disposal.

WEEE management in industrializing countries has its own characteristics and problems, and therefore this paper identifies some problems specific to such countries. The risky process of extracting copper from printed wiring boards is discussed as an example to illustrate the hazards of the e-waste recycling industry in India.

The WEEE Knowledge Partnership programme funded by seco (Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs) and implemented by Empa has developed a methodology to assess the prevailing situation, in order to better understand the opportunities and risks in pilot urban areas of three countries—Beijing-China, Delhi-India and Johannesburg-South Africa. The three countries are compared using an assessment indicator system which takes into account the structural framework, the recycling system and its various impacts. Three key points have emerged from the assessments so far: a) e-waste recycling has developed in all countries as a market based activity, b) in China and India it is based on small to medium-sized enterprises (SME) in the informal sector, whereas in South Africa it is in the formal sector, and c) each country is trying to overcome shortcomings in the current system by developing strategies for improvement.

Introduction

The use of electronic devices has proliferated in recent decades, and proportionately, the quantity of electronic devices, such as PCs, mobile telephones and entertainment electronics that are disposed of, is growing rapidly throughout the world. In 1994, it was estimated that approximately 20 million PCs (about 7 million tons) became obsolete. By 2004, this figure was to increase to over 100 million PCs. Cumulatively, about 500 million PCs reached the end of their service lives between 1994 and 2003. 500 million PCs contain approximately 2,872,000 t of plastics, 718,000 t of lead, 1363 t of cadmium and 287 t of mercury (Puckett and Smith, 2002). This fast growing waste stream is accelerating because the global market for PCs is far from saturation and the average lifespan of a PC is decreasing rapidly — for instance for CPUs from 4–6 years in 1997 to 2 years in 2005 (Culver, 2005).

PCs comprise only a fraction of all e-waste. It is estimated that in 2005 approximately 130 million mobile phones will be retired. Similar quantities of electronic waste are expected for all kinds of portable electronic devices such as PDAs, MP3 players, computer games and peripherals (O'Connell, 2002).

In 1991, Larry Summers, then Chief Economist of the World Bank (and now President of Harvard University), spoke of the economic sense of exporting first world waste to developing countries (Summers, 1991). He argued that

  • the countries with the lowest wages would lose the least productivity from “increased morbidity and mortality” since the cost to be recouped would be minimal;

  • the least developed countries, specifically those in Africa, were seriously under-polluted and thus could stand to benefit from pollution trading schemes as they have air and water to spare; and that

  • environmental protection for “health and aesthetic reasons” is essentially a luxury of the rich, as mortality is such a great problem in these developing countries that the relatively minimal effects of increased pollution would pale in comparison to the problems these areas already face.

The most prominent example of an international initiative stemming against this type of thinking is the 1989 Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal (in force since 1992). The Convention puts an onus on exporting countries to ensure that hazardous wastes are managed in an environmentally sound manner in the country of import. Apart from Afghanistan, Haiti, and the United States of America all 164 signatory countries have ratified the convention (Secretariat of the Basel Convention).

The transboundary movement of electronic waste, or e-waste, is regulated by the Basel Convention (UNEP, 1989), as it is considered to be dangerous to humans and the environment under the List A of Annex VIII of the Convention. There are highly toxic substances in e-waste such as cadmium, mercury and lead (EU, 2002b). However, e-waste also contains valuable substances such as gold and copper. Recovering these metals from e-waste has become a profitable business, resulting in global, transboundary trade in e-waste.

Countries such as China and India face a rapidly increasing amount of e-waste, both, from domestic generation and illegal imports. For emerging economies, these material flows from waste imports not only offer a business opportunity, but also satisfy the demand for cheap second-hand electrical and electronic equipment. In addition, the lack of national regulation and/or lax enforcement of existing laws are promoting the growth of a semi-formal or informal economy in industrializing countries. An entire new economic sector is evolving around trading, repairing and recovering materials from redundant electronic devices. While it is a source of livelihood for the urban and rural poor, it often causes severe risks to humans and the local environment. Most of the participants in this sector are not aware of the risks, do not know of better practices, or have no access to investment capital to finance profitable improvements.

‘Electronic waste’ or ‘e-waste’ for short is a generic term embracing various forms of electric and electronic equipment that have ceased to be of any value to their owners. There is, as yet, no standard definition. Table 1 lists selected definitions. In this article, we use the terms “WEEE” and “e-waste” synonymously and in accordance to the EU WEEE Directive.

According to the definitions in the Directive 2002/96/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council (January 2003) on Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (EU, 2002a), WEEE consists of the ten categories listed in Table 2.

This categorisation seems to be in the process of becoming a widely accepted standard. The Swiss “Ordinance on the Return, the Taking Back and the Disposal of Electrical and Electronic Equipment” (ORDEE) of 1998 differentiates between the following categories of WEEE:

  • electronic appliances for entertainment;

  • appliances forming part of office, communication and information technology;

  • household appliances;

  • electronic components of the (above) appliances

Recently the Swiss ordinance has been amended (June 2004) to match the EU Directive's definition (BUWAL, 2004).

Of the ten categories listed in Table 2, Categories 1–4 account for almost 95% of the WEEE generated (see Fig. 1).

Presently, e-waste is mainly generated in countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which have highly saturated markets for Electrical and Electronic Equipment (EEE), as Fig. 2 shows for the example of PCs. Comparatively, the market penetration of EEE in industrializing countries is not very high. However, these countries show the fastest growing consumption rates for EEE, and thus large quantities of domestically generated e-waste will become part of the waste stream in them as well in the near future.

Numerous methods have been suggested and used to estimate possible global quantities of WEEE. In Lohse et al. (1998) three estimation methods are described:

  • the ‘consumption and use method’, which takes the average equipment of a typical household with electrical and electronic appliances as the basis for a prediction of the potential amount of WEEE (used in the Netherlands to estimate the potential amount of WEEE);

  • the ‘market supply method’, which uses data about production and sales figures in a given geographical region (used by the German Electrical and Electronic Industries Association to estimate WEEE) and

  • the Swiss Environmental Agency's estimates based on the assumption that private households are already saturated and for each new appliance bought, an old one reaches its end-of-life.

In the first two methods, assumptions need to be made about the average life-time of EEE products as well as their average weight (from which to derive WEEE generation in tons). Under the third method, however, the assumption of the average life-time of the appliances is irrelevant, as it assumes a completely saturated market.

Another method of estimation developed at Carnegie Mellon University by Matthews et al. (1997) is also based on sales data. Although it focuses only on computers, it includes the reuse and storage parameters for obsolete machines, which in reality delay their entry into the waste stream. However, the model is only for the US and cannot be universally applied. An adapted model for WEEE estimation based on Matthews' model is shown in Fig. 3.

The results of WEEE estimation studies vary widely and comparisons of the studies are difficult because both the methods used and basic assumptions made differ from one study to another.

The following considerations are based on a simple model to estimate only scrap PC quantities. Fig. 4 displays timelines of global quantities of drop-out PCs, calculated as the difference between annual new PC sales and the annual growth of the installed PC base. The average drop-out rate for PCs over the period 1991–2004 is then calculated as the ratio between the drop-out PCs and the installed PC base, which turns out to be approximately 11%. This corresponds to a total life span of approximately 9 years — assuming a linear decay — which is considerably longer than the useful life of a PC and hence indicates quite a long storage time.

In the former 15 European member countries (EU15) the amount of WEEE generated varies between 3.3 and 3.6 kg per capita for the period 1990–1999, and is projected to rise to 3.9–4.3 kg per capita for the period 2000–2010 (EEA, 2003). According to the study (which assessed only five appliances: refrigerators, personal computers, televisions, photocopiers and small household appliances), this amount covers only 25% of the whole WEEE stream of the EU15. Hence, these numbers correspond to other estimates of total WEEE amounts, which range from 14 to 20 kg per capita (estimated by AEA, cited in Enviros, 2002). Nevertheless, the quantity of WEEE generated constitutes one of the fastest growing waste fractions, accounting for 8% of all municipal waste (The Economist, 2005).

Although the per-capita waste production in populous countries such as China and India is still relatively small and estimated to be less than 1kg e-waste per capita per year, the total absolute volume of WEEE generated in these countries is huge.

Additionally some developing and industrializing countries import considerable quantities of e-waste, even though the Basel Convention restricts transboundary trade of it. Fig. 5 indicates the main e-waste traffic routes in Asia. There are, however, no confirmed figures available on how substantial these transboundary e-waste streams are. From non-ratifying countries, such as the USA, estimates have been made that 50–80% of the collected domestic e-waste is not recycled domestically but rather shipped to destinations such as China (Puckett and Smith, 2002).

China, India and other countries have recently adjusted their laws to fight e-waste imports. However, being large producers of EEE (China manufactures for instance 90% of the global CRT production), these countries should recognize their inherent interest in closing material cycles and obtaining access to the raw materials in the e-waste streams.

When e-waste is disposed of or recycled without any controls, there are predictable negative impacts on the environment and human health. E-waste contains more than 1000 different substances, many of which are toxic, such as lead, mercury, arsenic, cadmium, selenium, hexavalent chromium, and flame retardants that create dioxins emissions when burned. About 70 % of the heavy metals (mercury and cadmium) in US landfills come from electronic waste. Consumer electronics make up 40 % of the lead in landfills. These toxins can cause brain damage, allergic reactions and cancer (Puckett and Smith, 2002).

E-waste contains considerable quantities of valuable materials such as precious metals. Early generation PCs used to contain up to 4 g of gold each; however this has decreased to about 1 g today1. The value of ordinary metals contained in e-waste is also very high: 1 ton of e-waste contains up to 0.2 tons of copper, which can be sold for about 500 Euros at the current world price (Soderstrom, 2004). Recycling e-waste has the potential therefore to be an attractive business and companies such as Boliden (Sweden), WEEE AS (Norway) and Citiraya (UK) are investing in the area.

Given the diverse range of materials found in WEEE, it is difficult to give a generalised material composition for the entire waste stream. However, most studies examine five categories of materials: ferrous metals, non-ferrous metals, glass, plastics and “other”. According to the European Topic Centre on Resource and Waste Management (ETC/RWM), iron and steel are the most common materials found in electrical and electronic equipment and account for almost half of the total weight of WEEE (Fig. 6). Plastics are the second largest component by weight representing approximately 21% of WEEE. Non-ferrous metals, including precious metals, represent approximately 13% of the total weight of WEEE (with copper accounting for 7%).

A similar composition is found in the e-waste recycled by the SWICO/S.EN.S recycling system in Switzerland (Fig. 7).

It is interesting to see that over time, the metal content has remained the dominant fraction, well over 50%, as compared to pollutants and hazardous components which have seen a steady decline (Fig. 8).

Section snippets

Extended producer responsibility (EPR)

Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) is being propagated as a new paradigm in waste management. The OECD defines EPR as an environmental policy approach in which a producer's responsibility for a product is extended to the post consumer stage of the product's life cycle, including its final disposal (OECD, 2001). Keeping in line with the Polluter-pays Principle, an EPR policy is characterised by the shifting of responsibility away from the municipalities to include the costs of treatment and

Problems specific to developing and transition countries

Some of the difficulties specific to developing and transition countries have been mentioned above and are summarized here:

  • Although the quantity of indigenous e-waste per capita is still relatively small, populous countries such as China and India are already huge producers of e-waste in absolute terms (Empa, 2005)

  • These countries also display the fastest growing markets for electrical and electronic equipment.

  • Some developing and transition countries are importing considerable quantities of

Conclusions

E-waste is an emerging issue, driven by the rapidly increasing quantities of complex end-of-life electronic equipment. The global level of production, consumption and recycling induces large flows of both toxic and valuable substances.

The international regulations mainly developed under the Basel Convention, focusing on a global ban for transboundary movements of e-waste, seem to face difficulties in being implemented effectively; however, a conclusive account of the situation and trends is not

Acknowledgements

The work reported here was funded by the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (seco). The authors would also like to thank Thomas Ruddy, Empa, and the three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.

Rolf Widmer, Technology and Society Lab, Empa, Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Testing and Research.

Rolf Widmer received his MSc in electrical engineering and his MBA for development co-operation from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH). For several years he was with the Institute for Quantum Electronics at the ETH. Recently he joined the Technology and Society Lab at Empa in Switzerland, a research institution belonging to the ETH domain. He manages the project

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    Rolf Widmer, Technology and Society Lab, Empa, Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Testing and Research.

    Rolf Widmer received his MSc in electrical engineering and his MBA for development co-operation from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH). For several years he was with the Institute for Quantum Electronics at the ETH. Recently he joined the Technology and Society Lab at Empa in Switzerland, a research institution belonging to the ETH domain. He manages the project “Knowledge Partnerships in eWaste Recycling”, which started in mid 2003. Before that he mainly worked in the field of rural energy supply in developing countries based on renewable energies. He has managed technical cooperation projects in several countries and headed the R and D department on control systems at entec ag, a Swiss company he co-founded and which specializes in decentralized hydro power for rural energy supply. Rolf Widmer is the author of several publications in this field.

    Heidi Oswald-Krapf, Technology and Society Lab, Empa, Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Testing and Research.

    Heidi Oswald-Krapf received her MSc in environmental science and her MBA for development co-operation from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH), Switzerland. She works as project manager at the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Testing and Research (Empa) in the group Sustainable Technology Cooperation with Developing and Transition Countries. At Empa she started in 2002 and worked in different projects in the field of eco-efficiency and waste management. Before that she worked for the Swiss Agency for the Environment, Forests and Landscape in the field of climate change and environmental observation.

    Deepali Sinha-Khetriwal has a Master's in International Management from the University of St.Gallen. As an intern at the Technology and Society Lab, she worked on the seco e-waste initiative and has written a thesis on the e-waste management systems in Switzerland and India. She is currently based in Mumbai, India, where she continues to work in the area of e-waste management.

    Max Schnellmann, Dr., State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (seco), Economic Development Cooperation.

    Max Schnellmann received a Doctorate (PhD) in Economics from the University of Zurich. He is currently Deputy Head of the Trade and Clean Technology Cooperation Division at the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs, Government of Switzerland. He also serves as policy and programme manager on ICT with a particular focus on e-business. He joined the Ministry of Public Economy in 1987 as Deputy Head of Section for Asian Developing and State Trading Countries. He then served as Counsellor for Economic Affairs and Commodities at the Swiss Embassy in London and was subsequently Principal Manager and Secretary to the Assembly of Contributors of the Nuclear Safety Department at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development in London.

    Heinz W. Böni, Technology and Society Lab, Empa, Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Testing and Research.

    Heinz W. Böni received his MSc in rural and environmental engineering in 1983 and his post graduate diploma in water treatment, water supply and waste management in 1985 both from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH). He has worked several years in the ETH domain as a scientific employee and gained his field experience in development cooperation in Nepal working as a project officer for water supply and sanitation. In the decade 1991–2000 he acted as project manager in the private sector in the field of waste management. Since 2001 he has managed the group sustec- sustainable technology cooperation within Empa, which constitutes an interface for knowledge management between industrialized and industrializing countries. In recent years he has devoted his time to various development cooperation projects in the area of sustainable industrial production and waste management.

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