Constitutional Law

Loopholes In Recycling Technology Law Cause Dirty Air in China

by Daniella Gayapersad-Chan, who serves on the Board of Directors for the Disaster Accountability Project and is President of Howard Public Interest Law Society

As Americans watch the Olympics, no shortage of media attention has been paid to environmental conditions in China, particularly to the poor air quality in Beijing. However, less attention has been paid to the ways in which US policy has contributed to the air quality problems. As just one example, consider our laws and policy on sending our electrical and electronic waste from common consumer technology abroad for recycling.

E-Waste & Federal Law
Our e-waste, which includes personal computers, mobile phones, televisions and other electronic devises, contains dangerous chemicals. These products contain materials that the Environmental Protection Agency has recognized as hazardous to human health and the environment, including plastics, cadmium, lead, mercury, hexavalent chromium and brominated flame retardants. Many products containing these hazardous materials are regulated by the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), which is a federal law designed to regulate hazardous waste.

The purpose of RCRA is to provide strict rules for hazardous materials to ensure their proper disposal. The law takes a “cradle to grave” approach by regulating hazardous material through its entire lifetime, from its creation to its destruction. Under RCRA, the regulations for hazardous waste include standards for identifying hazardous waste, transporting hazardous waste and disposing of hazardous waste.

In addition to regulating the lifecycle of hazardous materials, RCRA promotes conservation and strongly encourages the reuse, recovery and recycling of materials. An important objective of the law is “to promote the protection of health and the environment and to conserve valuable material and energy resources.” To attain this objective, the regulations treat materials that are destined to be recycled with leniency. This, however, creates a loophole whereby e-waste becomes exempted from RCRA and, as a result, is unregulated by the strict rules governing hazardous waste.

The regulations provide that RCRA does not cover materials classified as scrap metal and shredded or whole circuit boards when they are to be recycled. Consequently, cell phones, televisions, computers and printers become e-waste and are exported to developing nations.

Exporting E-Waste for Recycling: Bad for Workers, Bad for the Environment
Under the guise of recycling, e-waste enters developing nations like China and India where the regulations for recycling are slim to none. Because e-waste often contains precious materials such as gold and silver, many developing countries accept it to recover the precious metals for their own benefit. Most of America’s e-waste gets recycled to developing countries. Experts estimate that “about 70 percent of the 20-50 million tons of electronic waste produced globally each year is dumped in China, with most of the rest going to India and poor African nations.”

The recycling processes in these developing nations are cheap because they’re unregulated. In fact, it is ten times cheaper to export e-waste than to recycle it in the United States. However, these inexpensive recycling processes create dangerous conditions for workers.

At recycling centers in China and India, poor migrant workers and their families dismantle e-waste to retrieve materials they can sell. In these countries, men, women and children work at unregulated recycling centers without protection from the hazardous materials embedded in the e-waste they encounter. Without realizing the dangers, people use their bare hands with “shredders, open fires, acid baths and broilers” on computers and circuit boards that comprise the e-waste. These processes yield gold, silver and copper that poor workers may sell to get money to support their families, but also contaminate the air, water, and land with pollutants.

Research on Guiyu, China and New Delhi, India—two cities with expansive recycling centers—indicate that there are high levels of toxic metals in the river sediment, soil and groundwater as a result of the dangerous recycling processes. Further, melting e-waste and then soaking it in acid baths releases not just precious metals but also pollutants into the air.

In addition to polluting the environment, the recycling processes poison the workers. Pollutants that emerge from these processes have been associated with skin diseases, respiratory diseases, developmental defects, and cancer. As a result of direct, unprotected contact with hazardous substances, the workers may absorb harmful chemicals more easily. A study at a Chinese e-waste recycling site showed that the level of dioxins in women was “at least 25 times higher than the World Health Organization tolerable daily limit for adults.” Oblivious to the dangers to their own health and the environment, these workers continue to make a living with the ever growing e-waste.

A Solution Drawn From International Law?
A full discussion of solutions to this problem is beyond the scope of this brief article. However, one thing that bears mentioning is reform of our domestic laws and regulations to make our international treaty compliance meaningful. After all, in addition to the American laws regulating hazardous materials, there is an international law that regulates hazardous waste.

The Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal (hereafter referred to as “Basel Convention” or the “Convention”) is an international treaty that promotes environmental justice. The Basel Convention entered into force on May 5, 1992 and has 170 parties. The Convention aims to prevent technologically advanced countries, such as the United States, from exploiting developing nations with hazardous waste. Many signatories to the Convention, such as the European Union, enforce the Convention’s policies through legislation and practice. The United States must do the same and become an accountable party to the Basel Convention.

Although the US has signed the Basel Convention and begun to ratify it, the ratification process is incomplete. To complete the process, Congress must enact laws in accordance with the Convention. Instead of enacting completely new laws, the regulations could simply incorporate e-waste into current laws. Rather than providing exemptions for e-waste with the objective of promoting recycling, RCRA should monitor the recycling processes of e-waste. Such monitoring will ensure that America’s e-waste does not burden the people of developing countries.

The Olympic opening ceremonies might have reminded us that athletic endeavors can bring us together, but the environment could teach us the same lesson of interconnectedness. If the US continues its current e-recycling practices, the negative impact will be felt worldwide. And unhealthy air and water does not just harm one community or geopolitical entity. As one mainstream media article warns us, “[d]irty air traced back to China can be found in California's skies, and could become a major source of pollution here.” It’s in our interest to preserve the world we share.

Full post as published by ACS Blog on August 19, 2008 (boomark / email).