Recycles.Org  BETA Nonprofit Materials Exchange Network Computer & Office Electronics Recycling & Reuse

Date: Wednesday, 31 August 2005

Title: Computers are such a waste

Source: http://www.laramieboomerang.com/news

Remarks: BY ERIC BAKER

Own an old computer and want to get rid of it, but you don’t know how? Thankfully, Laramie is hosting a household hazardous waste collection day on Sept. 10 where residents can bring their old computers, among other items. Called “the biggest environmental crisis you’ve never heard of” by the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, consumer electronics are blighting landfills across the country and increasingly being shipped overseas to unsavory recycling centers. Wyoming is no different, though the small population means electronic waste is not such a visible problem. “This isn’t going to be a problem for us or our kids, but our grandkids are going to have a heck of a clean-up bill,” said Jode Dereemer, operations and projects coordinator for Tatooine Electronic Systems, the Cheyenne company that will be servicing the electronic waste collected on Sept. 10. “You can either pay now or pay later.” Tatooine is the only licensed computer recycler in the state, and it has contracts with a few counties (Campbell, Sweetwater, and Laramie) where dumping electronics in landfills is banned. Laramie does not have a ban on dumping computers in landfills, according to the Solid Waste Division of Public Works. Public awareness is the primary goal of the coalition, and Tatooine feels they could benefit from more knowledge as well. “The single largest contributor to people throwing computers in the garbage is that they just don’t know what they’re throwing away,” said Dereemer. In addition to recyclable materials, computers have phosphor, barium, plastics, brominated flame retardants, cadmium, mercury, beryllium, lead, and hexavalent chromium, all of which are toxic. These chemicals can all cause considerable damage to people, and beryllium is classified as a human carcinogen. Still, unless people are hanging around the landfills, they are not as likely to be affected directly from computer parts. More frequently it is leakage from landfills that contaminates groundwater and leads to subsequent damage. “The groundwater in Silicon Valley is contaminated, and the authorities didn’t discover it until it was too late,” said Barbara Kyle, a campaign coordinator for the coalition. “Now we have lots of Superfund sites spending millions of dollars, and no one knows if they will be able to clean up the mess. Meanwhile, there is no production in Silicon Valley now as the chipmakers all moved their factories to China and India, leaving the pollution behind.” Kyle found herself and the coalition with a problem: they were encouraging computer recycling, but innovation and marketing meant people were throwing out whole electronic systems when they bought new ones. Their solution is to advocate for producer takebacks on these electronics so that the manufacturers finally have an incentive to not build obsolescence into the technology and also to use less toxic chemicals. “We don’t want to discourage technological innovation, but the market doesn’t need to be set up for replacing the whole computer every time they get a new one, rather than just a small piece of it,” said Kyle. “If the manufacturers take responsibility for recycling their electronics, there won’t be as much waste and it won’t be as toxic, because that makes it harder to recycle.” Kyle admits that manufacturers would pass the cost of recycling on to consumers, but believes companies taking care of their own electronics will eliminate the pollution in China and India, where many U.S. recycling companies send their old computers. These disassembly sites in other countries often practice unsafe methods such as burning large pieces of plastic in order to get at copper wiring, according to a report co-written by the coalition and Greenpeace. In fact, Wyoming has 21 municipal landfills that have polluted groundwater, including the Laramie landfill. Fourteen of those landfills contaminate concentrations that exceed drinking water safeguards, although Laramie has not yet reached that level, said Bob Doctor, a program manager for the Department of Environmental Quality. A citizens advisory council was formed that made suggestions to the state Legislature on how to clean up the landfills. Their recommendations, encapsulated in H.B. 71, were sidelined in the Legislature so the council is taking a slower approach. They are now asking for an estimate of $183 million for remediation of the landfills, and planning to use a liner on all the landfills to catch 98 percent of leakage. There is no current plan in the Legislature to ban dumping of household electronics. “If we recycle one aluminum beer can, we’ve saved enough money to run a Palm Pilot for three hours,” said Dereemer. “People don’t realize how much power aluminum refineries use. They are literally hooked up to power generating stations.”