(A Kannada version of this article is published in the editorial page of Prajavani dated 23 Nov 2013 at: http://tinyurl.com/n27r2ng)
One of the most sought after consumer goods today is a cell phone. It is the one electronic item most frequently used, easily damaged, lost and thus replaced. It is also for many a showpiece, to flaunt one's status. Which psychology is effectively taken advantage of by cell phone manufacturers to make one feel inadequate and go for the newest phone on the market.
This is exactly what Apple capitalised on when launching the new IPhone 5 series. The company targeted the younger crowd particularly, in a massive and growing global market, and racked up unprecedented sales of 90 lakhs phone within 3 days of its launch in September. Perhaps one needs to be a particularly sophisticated cell phone user to figure out what is indeed the difference in functionality in what Iphone 4 series did, and what the 5 series does better. To me both do more or less the same kind of work.
The disturbing question that emerges is what happens now to the old phones, lakhs and lakhs of them? To most it does not make any sense to carry two phones (one old, one new) and in any case it is more sensible to go for a buy back the old phone offer. Apple has a policy not to resell old phones and actually breaks them down. In the process some of the precious material in them is recovered, but most of it is junked. It makes no sense at all that a perfectly working phone has been destroyed. But it is this culture of consumption which is projected as “development” as it constitutes growth for corporations who have an insatiable hunger for profits and market shares, and thus make us buy more, even when we may not need it.
The past decade has seen a massive revolution in cell phone technology. A major impact has been that the rapidly evolving software technology has caused redundancy in the hardware, thus forcing consumers to go in for the latest and fastest and fanciest product. This is not only true of cell phones but of most electronic products. Old TVs and computer monitors based on CRT technologies are quickly being replaced by LCD and LED flat-screens promising better picture quality, major improvements in user interface, and also energy conservation. With perfectly functional equipment becoming redundant so very frequently, and being replaced, what happens to all that is disposed? Not to forget the lakhs of fridges, crores of bulbs and tube lights, music systems, air conditioners, and a host of other consumer electronics being disposed. Where does it all go? Equally important is to ask where from the material to make the new equipment comes? It is in responding to these questions that we come face to face with the most unbelievable story of the material flow of electronic products and the waste they create.
Electronic products are put together with the most toxic materials humanity has ever discovered and produced. Electronics intended for consumers, industrial, defence or space all use a group of elements called Rare Earths. As described they are rare because they are found only in some parts of the world. Today about 90% or more of the rare earths mined and supplied for electronic equipment manufacturing is from China. And most of this supply from China comes from Baotou, a city in Inner Mongolia. A Daily Mail reporter who managed to sneak past the tight security zone in this remote area of China discovered the region to have been reduced to “an apocalyptic sight”. Massive lakes were formed to receive highly toxic material thrown out by factories milling the mined ores for recovering Rare Earths using a variety of acids and other toxic chemicals. Consequently destroying large extents of farmland, grazing pastures, killing people by the dozens and maiming scores more. China's tight control on the leakage of such news has ensured very little is known about the scale of the damage caused, except when leaked out by adventurous journalists or activists.
It is no different in New Caledonia, a very rare archipelago in southwest Pacific Ocean, east of Australia, from where 25% of the Nickel required for electronics, batteries and various other goods produced today is mined. As a consequence some of the most unique ecosystems that contains the highest biodiversity density anywhere in the world is being lost. Not only has mining nickel here threatened the existence of unique tribal identities, but also threatens the existence of the New Caledonian Crow, a bird that makes complex tools for various applications, a skill only humans have surpassed in the animal world.
The worst though of what mining minerals for the booming electronics sector does is now being witnessed in the massive country of Congo in Africa filled as it is with poor people, but rich in deposits of gold, diamonds and rare metals used in electronics. The cartels and price wars that control the supply of these minerals, and the armies that they support, has ripped apart this thickly forested country apart and thrown it deep into a civil war for couple of decades now. Thousands of people are killed as a result of this conflict every month and the youth do not know what peace means at all.
Violent and toxic is the foundation of the electronics industry today, not just in the sourcing of the resources required for producing new stuff but also in disposal of electronic waste as well. An interesting study by University of Northampton (UK) reveals that almost all the electronic waste generated in Europe and North America is exported to poorer countries in the South, in particular, India, China, Mexico, Brazil, Indonesia, Nigeria, etc.
UN's International Labour Organisation in its recent report entitled “The Global Impact of Ewaste” has revealed how the global movement of e-waste essentially is “illegal trade (and) is primarily driven by profit, with a multimillion dollar turnover, and the globalization of the illegal e-waste trade has intensified corporate, or “white-collar”, crime”. The report also documents that up to 40% of the highly toxic heavy metals found in landfills are due to e-waste disposed as part of daily garbage.
Bangalore is no exception as analysis conducted by Environment Support Group of water from lakes, streams and wells in and around Mavallipura, where over 40 lakhs tonnes of accumulated garbage lies in two illegal landfills, reveals very high concentrations of dangerous heavy metals such as Cadmium, Mercury and Lead, several times over the permissible limits. These deadly chemicals are bio-accumulative and destroy life, and could not have come there unless they were disposed as electronic and bio-medical waste.
There are rules, of course, to regulate and contain this massive pollution, like the E Waste Rules of India. But with very weak regulation, most of the e-waste processing and disposal is undertaken in the informal sector, with little or no compliance with occupational and environmental health standards. The problem is massive and growing as recent studies by ASSOCHAM has revealed. Bangalore and other major metros of India generate over 180,000 tonnes of electronic waste, almost all of which is handled informally, and disposed illegally.
