PopTech : Blog : Ecomaterials Lab: UN and EPA team up to track US e-waste

Ecomaterials Lab: UN and EPA team up to track US e-waste

Kiley Lambert ( Bio / Posts ) | Monday, May 09, 2011 UTC

PopTech's weekly Ecomaterials Labs series is part of our ongoing, focused look at next-generation sustainable materials innovation.

Burning used computers at a dump on the outskirts of Agbogbloshie, Ghana.

The United Nations, in cooperation with the United State Environmental Protection Agency, announced last week the launch of an international project that will attempt to track discarded U.S. cell phones, TVs and other electronic waste to help recycle everything from gold to rare earths while protecting human health in the meantime.

Ruediger Kuehr, executive secretary of StEP (Solving the E-Waste Problem), a project led by the U.N. University that works with firms such as Dell and Nokia, told Reuters that only about 10-15% of discarded electronics get recycled properly.

"Tracking flows around the world ... is fundamental to working out solutions," Kuehr said. On May 1, the EPA announced that $2.5 million in new funds would be allocated over five years to help track U.S. electronic waste.

The program will also seek to harmonize "international efforts, including research, tracking, data collection, analysis and information sharing," StEP and the EPA said.

"Electronics is the fastest growing waste stream in the United States," Stephanie Adrian of the EPA told Reuters. She said that just under half of U.S. states have takeback laws obliging manufacturers to recycle.

With rare earth prices soaring, and the social and environmental effects of e-waste continuing to mount, finding a way to effectively deal with the refuse of our ceaselessly upgrading techno-culture is imperative. Not to mention that it also makes good economic sense.

“Urban mining” advocates have been talking for years about the need to create a safe and effective way to recapture the precious metals found in some e-waste.

Most of the discarded electronics from the U.S. are sent to “developing” countries where whole industries based on crude, unsafe methods to extract the minerals exist. Many of the electronics contain toxic materials that harm surrounding environments and populations.

"If they can pull the metals out by bashing and burning, that's what they do," Barbara Kyle, the Electronic TakeBack Coalition's executive director, told the New York Times in April. "These are people working for a few dollars a day," who have no health safety.

And with gold above $1,500 an ounce and concerns mounting about Chinese dominance of supplies of rare earths (China currently accounts for about 96% of the market), “urban mining” has appeal beyond its obvious socio-ecological benefits.

A million cell phones can yield 53 pounds of gold, 550 pounds of silver, 20 pounds of palladium and more than 9 tons of copper, according to experts quoted by the Bonn-based StEP. To put that into perspective, in 2006, about a billion cell phones were sold worldwide.

Image: Pieter Hugo

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