Management solutions for electronic waste from production to disposal

Management Solutions for Electronic Waste From Production to Trash

Looking for best management solution

Recycling modern practices

Economical model

Everyone would agree that a growing role of high technologies, modernization of existing technologies and introduction of new is the result of the dynamically changing society that lives in the age of technological progress. None could ever imagine in 1950 ies that in some five decades the role of electronics and high-tech would be so essential and vital for society in general that it will be the guarantee of future progress.

None would argue that electronics industry as every innovative industry comes with more complicated and powerful products quickly, changing obsolete equipment on new constantly, and leaving old electronics without any use. Here comes a question: what happens or what has to happen to all that old computers, TV and radio equipment, old batteries and other electronic related products after they run out of use? The question is direct -it becomes unused trash. Before exploring the qualities of this "intelligent" trash, let's refer to recent statistics about the amount of the electronic waste in industrialized world:

As the National Office of Pollution Prevention (Canada) reports: 140-000 tonnes of eWaste had exited on the Canadian market in 1999 alone.

In the United States, it had been estimated that:

more than 315 million computers have become obsolete between 1997 and 2004" (SVTC, n.d.).

If to speak about industrialized countries of Europe we would find the following data:

6.5 to 7.5 million tonnes of eWaste per year get discarded in the European Union (EU)" (Young, Garman & Tupper, 2000)

If to speak only about Californian statistics we would find the following data:

The consumer electronics waste stream is growing three times faster than the solid waste stream...An estimated 500 million computers will become obsolete in the U.S.A. By the year of 2007." (from the national recycling Coalition predictions).

More than 10.000 computers and TV sets become obsolete a day and are put aside in the garage only in the state of California" (from SVTC)

Computers that will become obsolete by the year of 2005 contain approximately 1.2 billion lbs of lead (from Californians against waste Study)

The biggest part of recent environmental researches highlight the problem of the electronic waste as one of the most progressing in the waste stream of urban and metropolitan areas worldwide (electronic waste stands for 3-5% of urban solid waste stream in industrialized world). This problem is not limited to the concept of "solid waste," as electronic waste includes a wide amount of different hazardous products, heavy metals and toxic combinations, which pollute water, air, etc. It's enough to name some of the heavy metals with high level of toxicity that are used in electronics industry: mercury, lead, cadmium, barium.

The problem of the electronic waste can be solved by recycling, as electronic waste represents valuable material for the recycling of precious and valuable metals (gold, silver, palladium, platinum, copper, lead). Still it's understood that the problem of e-waste can not be limited to partial recycling of waste, as there is a huge amount of trash that is left after recycling, and which has no practical potential value.

In order the problem to disappear; recycling practices have to correlate with reasonable electronic industry management that would include the article for regulating e-waste recycling. Moreover serious environmental legislation has to be established that would regulate the conditions of production and utilization of electronic products.

Discussion of the problem

According to the research made by Sodhi and Reimer (2001) typical material composition of electronic scrap looks in the following way: refractory oxides-30.2%, plastics-30.0%, copper-20.1%, iron-8.1%, tin-4.0%, nickel-2.0%, aluminium-2.0%, zinc-1.0%, silver-0.2%, gold-0.1%, palladium-0.09% (from Models for recycling electronics end-of-life products,2001)

The most toxic components of electronic waste are mercury and lead. Depending upon polluting concentration lead may be the reason of the set of serious disorders: from strokes to nervous system issues; mercury results serious brain disorders. E-waste lead stands for 40% of the total amount of waste lead, e-waste mercury stands for 22% of the whole amount of waste mercury. (according to SVTC).

The problem of electronic waste had become burning already in the past decade and demanded an increased study of the possible solutions. The results didn't make scientists to wait. Already in the second half of 1990 ies, groups of scientists all over the world had come with reasonable solutions of the e-waste; moreover the recycling by their calculations seemed to be more than profitable industry in some cases.

But the solution to the problem in general seems to be impossible if only some industrial corporations or small companies would specialize on recycling of electronic waste. The problem would not be solved at all, as the biggest part of e-waste would still remain to be not demanded. Moreover these companies would not be able to recycle all e-waste properly and would have narrow specialization. In this situation the optimal solution is the development of the state-regulated system of electronic waste management that would include proper and flexible legislation, distribution of roles in the recycling process between municipal environment agencies and companies-producers of electronic goods, besides the interests of the customer have to be protected as they have to get some kind of refund for recycling obsolete electronics. (Obsolete electronics, even if not used has a potential hazard for its keeper).

Looking for best management solution

According to the report "Best Management practices for E-waste" the hierarchy of electronic waste management practices can be divided into certain order, according to their environmental preference:

Reuse or electronic items, damaged components, etc.

A recycling of e-waste for material recovery management of e-waste for energy recovery disposal of e-waste via incineration or landfill (least preferable) (from Best Management practices for E-waste p.28)

In order to develop the whole system of management solution for the electronic waste problem, environmental authorities first have to refer to the local government, as this is a quite expensive program and it can not be solved by individual financing, especially because its outcomes not often become 100% profitable or even compensated.

That's why local governments of the areas with a growing problem of e-waste have to develop a set of legislative and official measures in order to regulate this growing problem.

Legislature has to refer to the regulation of utilization of electronic waste; terms of its storing and special legislative acts have to be taken in order to solve the problem of the most hazardous e-waste: CRT (cathode ray tubes of TV sets and computer monitors as they contain the biggest percentage of e-waste lead). These legislative regulations are quite a problem for a country in general as "only Florida and some more few states have banned CRT screen form landfills and incinerations" (from SVTC) Only Minnesota is providing take back subsidized recycling programs, but the practice of one state is not enough in the scale of the U.S.A. In general. According to some environmental scientists government subsidizing of the recycling industry can stand for the optimal solution of the problem.

In comparison to the local environmental programs of the U.S.A., such that are introduced in California or Florida, the countries of the European Union had stepped farer in this situation: "The EU countries are by far the leaders in WEEE management. They have recently adopted a set of directives that have for goal to mitigate the environmental impact of e-waste. Their directives are based around the concept of Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR). This means that the producer of electrical or electronic equipment will be responsible for the whole life cycle of their product: from the conception, to the disposal. Furthermore, all WEEE must be recycled or reused. Not only that, but dangerous chemicals and heavy metals will be phased out by 2004 and new products must be produced with some recycled plastic. These directives are pioneering the industry and surely likely to reduce and eventually eliminate the issues surrounding e-waste. The EU is taking leaps in the right direction." (Hedemann-Robinson, The EU Directives on waste electrical and electronic equipment and on the restriction of use of certain hazardous substances in electrical and electronic equipment: adoption achieved. (European Environmental Law Review, p.53-60 2003)

The problem of electronic waste had been revised already in 1999, and in the year of 2002 countries of European Union had come to the first definite regulations concerning e-waste practices:

BRUSSELS - A new law to make companies meet the cost of recycling their own electronic goods from refrigerators to hairdryers has won approval from EU parliamentarians and governments, officials said.

The consumer will be able to return equipment at the end of its life free of charge and send it for environmentally sound treatment, re-use and recycling," said Margot Wallstrom, European Commissioner for the environment. Wallstrom said making firms pay for recycling at the end of a product's life would be an important incentive to producers to take environmental concerns into account when designing goods.

The law says a financial guarantee must be added to the price of items to make sure funds are available for recycling." (from World environmental news, Internet edition)

Besides developing flexible legislation that will distribute the functions of recycling between manufacturers and municipal services there has to be a definite and developed program that would specialize on the optimal and the most exhaust utilization of electronic waste, reduction of e-waste landfills and incineration. Recycling program should not be limited to the recycling of CRT monitors, as their owners are more likely to bring the whole obsolete computer system to the recycling, not just computer monitors.

The benefit of integral program of recycling is that it allows using a variety of materials used in the electronics manufacturing like precious metals, semi-precious metals, and some electronic items in the reuse.

The most important part of the e-waste management is search of the most appropriate and qualified partners in the technical or practical part of the problem solution. This problem is of the essential value, as the efficiency of e-waste management depends primary on the executives of the practical side more than on simple legislature. Legislature may pave the way to the problem solution but can not solve it all by ecological and environmental laws and bills. In order to involve partners and government investors it's important to outline one extra benefit of e-waste recycling: it may create extra jobs for unemployed people as well as will create training programs for electronic items repairing and reusing. So this practice will be able to solve partly the problem of unemployment, training courses and recycling.

Another important aspect is collecting of e-waste. As most of customers still prefer to store obsolete electronics in their garages, store-rooms, etc. e-waste management executives have to break this stereotype and have to give some recoveries to the owners of old electronics in order to develop the process of recycling, it also refers to high schools and educational institutions as they represent a remarkable percentage of electronics users. Besides e-waste management, officials have to develop the transportation program that will allow common residence to utilize electronics without spending money on transportation and on utilization fees.

The organization of this process is quite an expensive project, but the results will cover all the finance spent. If to calculate the damages from lead pollution, from mercury pollution, money spending on polluted water clean up and on medical expenses to recover those who suffered from mercury and lead pollution- the balance would be in favor of e-waste management absolutely. Moreover, e-waste management would create redistribution of environment protection and clean-up technology functions in environment protection and control over the solid waste in urban areas. It will make the waste utilization process more optimal, cheap and convenient both for official authorities and common residents and of course it will be more beneficial for environment.

E-waste management may become a profitable business if it becomes organized and operates on a regular basis. In addition; it seems to be one of the most profitable in the complicated structure of the solid waste utilization industry. The only problem that it faces is that sorting of electronic waste has to be done on the professional level.

If the materials of electronic waste have a definite value that will cover transportation, recycling and managing costs it may become a profitable business and will help to save raw materials for future. It's generally understood that the cost of the materials got from the recycling process is lower than the cost of the materials got by common industrial practices.

It often happens that business electronic waste may be reusable and repaired, and these services will appear to have a greater value than simple utilization and recycling.

It's also important to pay a special attention to business electronic waste as it has a higher potential to be reused than waste form urban residents.

Reuse of the electronic items seems to be the most appropriate solution of the problem. As modernization of business electronics happens constantly and sometimes businesses even do not have time to manage with obsolete electronics, it turns into a waste with time. By the way most of its components might be reused, or at least have a potential to be used if repaired. E-waste management theory assumes that businesses might donate obsolete or not-used electronics to non-profit, or charity organizations that would care in future about its distribution to become in use again. As there might be only a small percentage of reusable electronics in the residential sector of electronics customers, than the priority in this direction of solving the problem has to be given to business organizations.

In order to encourage the following practices environmental officials suggest using tax deductions to such donators, and taking the function of transporting electronic products to their potential user, or at least to the non-profit organization which works with this problem. The only problem is to have a certain kind of expertise which would determine the potential of electronics to be used again and its possible working period.

Recycling-modern practices

Nowadays, the practice of recycling e-waste gets a constant spread all over developed industrialized countries. The main problem for the development of this kind of industry is lack of regulating legislation.

According to the research done by Macauley, Palmer and Smith in 2003: "Currently only about 10% of all CRT are being recycled." Data is not convincible, but still the changes in the attitude towards the problem are observed. National safety council of Canada reports that: "between 6% and 14% of computers are being recycled."

This modest data proves that the main tool in the future solution of this problem can not be limited to simple legislation, but people's attitude towards problem has to be changed as well. From this point government officials have to develop special education programs that would inform residents about the importance of the problem, about the danger of e-waste materials and about an urgent need of introducing new practices in solution of this problem.

The only exception from this rule are environmental groups in Silicon Valley. "Private activism groups in Silicon Valley start playing an important educational role in informing residents about the importance of e-waste recycling and plan to introduce educational environmental practices in public education institutions" (SVTC)

In Canada recycling practices are of no concern from the side of officials at all. That modest data of computer recycling, which varies in the limits of 10-15% of computer equipment being recycled shows that this problem is the narrow interest of certain industrial businesses but not a public concern at all. The main problem in the solution or at least in the search for solutions is public environmental illiteracy and indifference, which makes barrier to be bigger even compared to none effective legislation. Plus, there are nearly no real facilities for recycling of e-waste on industrial basis.

Macauley in his study suggests a solution of the CRT screens recycling which includes banning incineration practices and development of recycling industry through government financing of the recycling programs. But other authors have another point-of-view on this problem, even if Macauley insists:

to simply ban incineration, as this disposal technique has the greatest environmental and health damages"(Macauley Dealing with electronic waste: modeling the cost and environmental benefits of computer monitor disposal 2003).

Their point-of-view has strong arguments even referring to the data provided by Macauley, who made the calculations about the approximate cost of recycling, benefits from recycling and profits. Still this statistics shows that, simple banning and susidizing of the recycling practices by government authorities won't be able to solve the probem as this is a very expensive project and it may be simply rejected by local authorities if local budget can not afford it. According to Macauley's data by the words of Mathieu Ruel, official would have to subsidize over the 50% of recycling expenses, as he writes in Sustainable solution for E-waste:

Although the cheapest alternative, to me that is not enough, especially when they estimate that if all types of disposal were banned (case a, b, g), the cost of disposing of one CRT monitors would be about 20$. Subsidizing half the recycling cost (case b) in the situation of a full ban, yields the best recycling results with over 60% recycling rate and no environmental damage; but it also costs the most. (from Sustainable solution for E-waste, p.7)

But as it had been mentioned above, e-waste is not only hazardous materials that are very dangerous for environment and human's health, it also includes various precious and semi-precious materials that can be recovered from the e-waste and be used for industrial purposes again. According to the report of Stevels, Ram and Deckers, in recycling industry e-waste may have the following classification: e-waste items with high percentage of hazardous toxic materials (lead and mercury) and with low maintenance of valuable materials, and those which have high potential to be recycled for precious and semi-precious materials and for hazardous materials as well. (from Take-back of discarded consumer electronic products from the perspective of the produced. Conditions for success p.387)

The first group includes predominantly TV sets, computer monitors, obsolete radio electronics, and the second group includes computer hardware (as main boards, circuits, etc.). The main purpose of modern scientific research, by the definition of these authors has to be directed mostly on looking for the most optimal and inexpensive solutions for the recycling and utilization of the most invaluable electronic waste, as it's share in the whole electronic solid waste stream is constantly growing and it has the minimal possibility of being reused or modernized.

If to look on the situation in modern recycling practices we can refer to the report of Sodhi and Reimer (2001) whose calculations show the approximate benefits from recycling business. Scientists estimated that:

although the concentration of precious metals is of less than 1%, their high value can make it worthwhile to recycle electronic waste...from 80-000 pounds of e-waste, recycler can make up to 40,000$" (Sodhi, Reimer Models for recycling electronics end-of-life products 2001).

A from Models for recycling electronics end-of-life products)

Even though that the perspective of this business exists, there comes a problem with recycling of toxic and hazardous e-waste, which is very expensive in recycling and still doesn't make any environmental advantage, as the technology of its recycling is still harmful for ecology and very toxic. Moreover, the survey and simple recent practices show that recyclers are interested in recycling materials which will give them profit, not recycling of simple hazardous waste. That's why the recycling only of a small part of e-waste, which contains precious and valuable materials, wouldn't solve the problem. Again, the waste of the recycling technology would still contain toxic materials, which have to be utilized again, and their utilization may be unprofitable for recycling business. So this problem can not be solved the actions and activity only of industrial organizations, legislative regulations have to be involved in this problem. Only legislation may regulate the conditions of recycling and in some way subsidize recycling of toxic e-waste components.

In the report of P. Kopacek and B. Kopacek (1999) it has been stated that:

automated disassembly is they key to recycling e-waste. Automated disassembly would save on one of the greatest costs in e-waste recycling: labour. This does not seem to be a viable solution for the wide range of products available on the market. It might work for certain manufacturers with standardized building procedure and an efficient sorting method, but it certainly does not provide a widespread solution. It is generally agreed in the e-waste industry that manual disassembly is too costly." (from Intelligent disassembly of electronic equipment p.167)

This suggestion may look very promising and urgent, but its realization will meet a lot of obstacles. Kopacek is the scientists working in the field of automatization of industrial processes, and the development of new technological ideas in the sphere of environmental science is quite a new trend in this branch of science. Now it's easy to make the forecasts for future, some sorts of prediction and assume that recycling will be mostly automated. In reality such automated lines of recycling would require a lot of recourses for being designed and later introduced in industrial practices. These sorts of projects do not look profitable and will not cover the spent costs in close future. If to speak about such projects from other branch of environmental engineering, we can refer to the various projects of recycling of radioactive waste, but due to high net value and uneffiency, nearly none of them was introduced in practice in industrialized world. Moreover there exists a tendency of transportation of radioactive waste to the developing countries or to the desert and semi-desert areas (like Patagonia in Argentina). The tendency of transporting e-waste to the developing countries and recycling it in these countries is starting to spread nowadays as well. China is one of such importers of e-waste, where the labour is cheap and e-waste is being recycled into reusable materials or is being simply thrown on the unpopulated territories. Such "solution" doesn't solve the core of the problem but only moves it from the developed world. Nevertheless, public will face this problem soon in future. And when it'll be faced again, more serious measures would have to be taken.

Authors Cui and Forsberg (2003) propose the following methods:

E-waste has to be pounded and sorted by the variety of techniques used in modern technology of pounding solid materials. It may be realized by following techniques that include: eddy current, corona electrostatic, and jiggling. These techniques have proved to be the most optimal in the solution of e-waste recycling. The main aspect of this technological process is that e-waste has to be shredded and sorted in even particles with a size of five millimetres." (from Mechanical recycling of waste electric and electronic equipment: a review p. 254)

Besides theoretical projects that suggest new technologies, approaches and methods of e-waste recycling, there exist those which have been approved by long-time practice and are relatively technologically simple. It's predominantly recovering of the materials by smelting. This process works in the following way: e-waste is being heated up to the temperature when the most easy-smelting component smelts, then temperature is increased and the process continues until all components have been extracted. This kind of "cracking" (term which is more used in oil engineering) is used in recovering metals from electronic circuits.

Along with this common practices there exist other innovative and alternative methods of metal recovering. These methods are biologically active and have the least danger for the environment and at the same time their efficiency is very high and they pretend to be introduced into recycling industry. Nowadays scientists had found that fungus and certain kind of bacteria are able to recover definite kind of metals from alloys, and that these methods may be applied for e-waste recycling practices in future. Brandl, Brosshard, and Wegman in their article "Computer munching microbes: metal leaching from computer scrap by bacteria and fungi" write that: