how to dispose of lcd monitors made in china

E-waste, or electronic waste, consists of everything from scrapped TVs, refrigerators and air conditioners to that old desktop computer that may be collecting dust in your closet.

Many of these gadgets were initially manufactured in China. Through a strange twist of global economics, much of this electronic junk returns to China to die.

“According to United Nations data, about 70% of electronic waste globally generated ended up in China,” said Ma Tianjie, a spokesman for the Beijing office of Greenpeace.

“Much of [the e-waste] comes through illegal channels because under United Nations conventions, there is a specific ban on electronic waste being transferred from developed countries like the United States to countries like China and Vietnam.”

For the past decade, the southeastern town of Guiyu, nestled in China’s main manufacturing zone, has been a major hub for the disposal of e-waste. Hundreds of thousands of people here have become experts at dismantling the world’s electronic junk.

On seemingly every street, laborers sit on the pavement outside workshops ripping out the guts of household appliances with hammers and drills. The roads in Guiyu are lined with bundles of plastic, wires, cables and other garbage. Different components are separated based on their value and potential for re-sale. On one street sits a pile of green and gold circuit boards. On another, the metal cases of desktop computers.

At times, it looks like workers are reaping some giant plastic harvest, especially when women stand on roadsides raking ankle-deep “fields” of plastic chips.

In one workshop, men sliced open sacks of these plastic chips, which they then poured into large vats of fluid. They then used shovels and their bare hands to stir this synthetic stew.

“We sell this plastic to Foxconn,” one of the workers said, referring to a Taiwanese company that manufactures products for many global electronics companies, including Apple, Dell and Hewlett-Packard.

This may be one of the world’s largest informal recycling operations for electronic waste. In one family-run garage, workers seemed to specialize in sorting plastic from old televisions and cars into different baskets. “If this plastic cup has a hole in it, you throw it away,” said a man who ran the operation, pointing to a pink plastic mug. “We take it and re-sell it.”

According to the April 2013 U.N. report “E-Waste in China,” Guiyu suffered an “environmental calamity” as a result of the wide-scale e-waste disposal industry in the area.

Much of the toxic pollution comes from burning circuit boards, plastic and copper wires, or washing them with hydrochloric acid to recover valuable metals like copper and steel. In doing so, workshops contaminate workers and the environment with toxic heavy metals like lead, beryllium and cadmium, while also releasing hydrocarbon ashes into the air, water and soil, the report said.

Studies by the Shantou University Medical College revealed that many children tested in Guiyu had higher than average levels of lead in their blood, which can stunt the development of the brain and central nervous system.

Piles of technological scrap had been dumped in a muddy field just outside of town. There, water buffalo grazed and soaked themselves in ponds surrounded by piles of electronic components with labels like Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Epson and Dell.

“Releases of mercury can occur during the dismantling of equipment such as flat screen displays,” wrote Greenpeace, in a report titled “Toxic Tech.” “Incineration or landfilling can also result in releases of mercury to the environment…that can bioaccumulate and biomagnify to high levels in food chains, particularly in fish.”

Most of the workers in Guiyu involved in the e-waste business are migrants from destitute regions of China and poorly educated. Many of them downplayed the potential damage the industry could cause to their health.

“Of course it isn’t healthy,” said Lu, a woman who was rapidly sorting plastic shards from devices like computer keyboards, remote controls and even computer mice. She and her colleagues burned plastic using lighters and blow-torches to identify different kinds of material.

Several migrants said that while the work is tough, it allows them more freedom than working on factory lines where young children are not permitted to enter the premises and working hours are stringent.

Despite the environmental degradation and toxic fumes permeating the air, many in Guiyu said that conditions have improved dramatically over the years.

“I remember in 2007, when I first came here, there was a flood of trash,” said Wong, a 20-year-old man who ferried bundles of electronic waste around on a motorcycle with a trailer attached to it.

“Before people were washing metals, burning things and it severely damaged people’s lungs,” Wong added. “But now, compared to before, the [authorities] have cracked down pretty hard.”

A group of farmers who had migrated from neighboring Guangxi province to cultivate rice in Guiyu told CNN they did not dare drink the local well water.

“It may not sound nice, but we don’t dare eat the rice that we farm because it’s planted here with all the pollution,” Zhou said, pointing at water-logged rice paddy next to him.

Asked who did eat the harvested rice, Zhou answered: “How should I know? A lot of it is sold off … they don’t dare label the rice from here as ‘grown in Guiyu.’ They’ll write that its rice from some other place.”

Not that surprising considering that the latest food scandal to hit the country earlier this month is cadmium-laced rice. Officials in Guangzhou city, roughly 400 kilometers away from Guiyu, found high rates of cadmium in rice and rice products. According to the city’s Food and Drug Administration samples pulled from a local restaurant, food seller and two university canteens showed high levels of cadmium in rice and rice noodles. Officials did not specify how the contaminated rice entered the city’s food supply.

CNN made several attempts to contact the Guiyu town government. Government officials refused to comment on the electronic waste issue and hung up the phone.

“Why are they stopping the garbage from reaching us?” asked one man who ran a plastic sorting workshop. “Of course it’s hurting our business,” he added.

The Chinese government had some success regulating e-waste disposal with a “Home Appliance Old for New Rebate Program,” which was tested from 2009 to 2011.

Even if Chinese authorities succeed in limiting smuggled supplies of foreign garbage, the U.N. warns that the country is rapidly generating its own supply of e-waste.

“Domestic generation of e-waste has risen rapidly as a result of technological and economic development,” the U.N. reported. It cited statistics showing an exponential surge in sales of TV’s, refrigerators, washing machines, air conditioners and computers in China over a 16-year period.

To avoid a vicious cycle of pollution, resulting from both the manufacture and disposal of appliances, Greenpeace has lobbied for manufacturers to use fewer toxic chemicals in their products.

Guiyu, China, is the last stop for tens of millions of tons of discarded TVs, cell phones, batteries, computer monitors, and other types of electronic waste each year. In this area of Guangdong province in southeast China, the industry is characterized by thousands of small, family-run workshops interspersed with residences, schools, and stores. The workshops employ hundreds of thousands of local and migrant workers to extract copper, silver, gold, platinum, and other materials for resale, often burning or using acid baths to separate out the elements of interest. NIEHS-supported researcher Aimin Chen, M.D., Ph.D., an assistant professor in the Department of Environmental Health at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, is studying the impacts of e-waste recycling on pregnant women and their children in Guiyu.

With an estimated 20–50 million tons of e-waste produced annually worldwide, it is the fastest-growing stream of municipal solid waste. Management of e-waste is a significant environmental health concern. In developing countries, where most informal and primitive e-waste recycling occurs, workers and others who live near these recycling facilities are exposed to dangerous chemicals with potentially long-term adverse health effects. Other locations where such recycling is prevalent include India and Ghana, Liberia, and Nigeria in Africa.

As they process e-waste, workers—who are often children—are directly exposed to lead, cadmium, brominated flame retardants, and other toxic chemicals, many that present development risks. Chen noted that workshops are rarely well-ventilated and workers wear little, if any, personal protective equipment. Individually, these chemicals carry health risks; mixtures of them are potentially further cause for concern. The e-waste that is not commercially viable is dumped or burned. Thus, workers and others in the community, including children, are exposed through inhalation of fumes, ingestion of dust, contact with water and soil, and other pathways.

“As the use of electronics grows in both industrialized and developing economies, this will be an ever-increasing public health problem,” said Chen, with vulnerable populations at greatest risk.

Chen noted the paradox in public perceptions about e-waste recycling: “We often think that recycling is a good thing and better than mining these minerals from the ground,” he said. “The problem comes when the way of recycling is not environmentally friendly or good for people’s health.”

Chen is working in Guiyu with Xia Huo, M.D., Ph.D., a professor and Director of the Analytical Cytology Lab at nearby Shantou University Medical College. The joint study enrolled 600 pregnant women from Guiyu and from a control site. The researchers measured metal exposures in the women, and are looking at birth outcomes and, ultimately, long-term outcomes on the infants’ neurobehavioral development. Chen said they hope to publish the first of their results in the next few months. “We want to analyze exposure levels, and also provide some recommendations about how to advise the community about the risks,” he said.

Huo has conducted her own research on children in Guiyu since 2004. She said she became aware of the potential problems associated with e-waste recycling after joining the faculty at Shantou, about 40 kilometers away from Guiyu, in 1998. A memory of two small children swimming in a highly polluted stream in Guiyu stays with her more than a decade later. In addition to focusing on children because of their developmental issues, studying the workers is also difficult, she said, because they move frequently from workshop to workshop, and even between Guiyu and their homes elsewhere in China. Also, employers are often reluctant to allow researchers to enter their facilities and slow down the work, she said.

Chen’s and Huo’s studies are part of a growing, but still small, body of research on the impacts of e-waste on children. The observed health issues, including respiratory irritation and skin burning, in addition to the effects mentioned above, led the World Health Organization recently to develop an initiative on e-waste and children’s health. In June, with support from NIEHS and others, WHO convened a Work Group on E-Waste and Children to bring together experts and other stakeholders (see Box). An informal survey conducted in preparation for the meeting indicated only a handful of studies exist that look into health impacts of e-waste. One of the objectives of the meeting was to call more attention to the issue among the global scientific and medical communities.

There are some small signs that improved awareness and knowledge of the hazards can lead to improvement. For example, Huo said Guiyu local authorities published a decree in 2012 to ban burning e-waste and soaking it in sulfuric acids, and have promised greater supervision and fines for offenses. She also said that 2012 was the second year since 2004 that concentrations of metal, especially lead, decreased in the children studied. (They attribute the other year of decline—2009—to the global financial crisis that resulted in smaller volume of materials recycled.) Still, much remains to be done in Guiyu and worldwide. Increased awareness of this issue among global consumers, evidence-based interventions, and policy changes will be important to reduce the burden of disease among children and adults working in the e-waste recycling trade.

At the Working Group on E-Waste and Children’s Health meeting convened by WHO in June and co-sponsored by NIEHS and Germany’s Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety, NIEHS Director Linda Birnbaum, Ph.D., stressed the importance of understanding and mitigating against the effects of e-waste recycling.

“Having this group review the current situation of e-waste exposure in children, identify research gaps, and highlight successful interventions and strategies will help us determine our next steps,” she said in opening remarks to the participants via a prerecorded video. “E-waste and the impact that it can have on health is a major topic of concern for all of you and for us at NIEHS, especially the impact it has on pregnant women and young children living so close to e-waste recycling sites.”

Chen and Huo were among the approximately 60 experts and other key stakeholders from WHO, other UN agencies, and research institutions. Next steps include creation of a network of researchers willing to share data and disseminate findings, dedicated sessions on e-waste at the Pacific Basin Consortium Meeting and the Fourth WHO International Conference on Children’s Environmental Health, and several publications. In addition, NIEHS will develop a white paper that connects the discussions and recommendations of the meeting as they relate to the mission of the Institute.

You can return unwanted electronics to manufacturers for recycling or disposal for free. Electronic manufacturers, such as Samsung, Sony, or Toshiba, mustaccept electronics from residents at no cost.

You can find more information about recycling electronics at the store where you purchased the item or at any store that sells the item. You can also call the manufacturer or check your brand"s website.

The NY State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC) keeps a list of registered electronics manufacturers and information about their e-waste acceptance programs on its website.

Short-lived electronic devices have become a significant waste stream. This waste is a potential source of valuable metals, but only a small portion is currently recycled. A common electronic waste is the liquid-crystal display (LCD) screen used in computers and televisions. LCDs contain two glass plates sandwiching a liquid-crystal mixture. The outer plate surfaces are covered with polarizer films, but the inner plate surfaces contain a functional indium tin oxide film. Indium is a critical raw material with limited supplies and high costs. Several possible recycling methods have been developed to recover indium but purity remains low.

It is illegal in Oregon to dispose of computers, monitors and TVs in the garbage or at disposal sites such as landfills, incinerators and transfer stations. Anyone knowingly disposing of these items can be fined.

The purpose of the disposal ban, which went into effect January 2010, is to require people to reuse or recycle these items. Reuse and recycling saves energy, conserves resources and reduces greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental impacts. In addition, requiring manufacturers to take responsibility for end-of-life management of their products encourages them to design products with less waste and fewer toxics.

Don"t place computers, monitors and TVs in your trash, recycling bin or place them at the curb. These items require special handling and cannot be collected via your regular curbside service.

Disposal sites cannot accept computers, monitors and TVs for disposal. A recycling depot located at a landfill, transfer station or other site may accept them for recycling. Check with the facility first.

Oregon E-Cycles provides free recycling of computers, monitors and TVs. Anyone can bring seven or fewer computers, monitors and TVs at a time to participating Oregon E-Cycles collectors for free recycling.

We founded Sadoff E-Recycling & Data Destruction in 2017 to help address the growing need for proper electronic waste disposal. In the years since we began our operations, the amount of electronic equipment produced annually has only accelerated. The accompanying production of e-waste facing our planet has put us in a desperate situation; one might even say we have our backs to the wall.

Measuring 13,171 miles, the Great Wall of China is estimated to be the heaviest artificial object on Earth. Yet even the weight of this enormous structure has now been surpassed by the amount of global e-waste produced annually. Per a staggering report from the Waste Electronics and Electrical Equipment (WEEE) Forum, over 57.4 million metric tons of e-waste was produced in 2021.

The WEEE Forum report predicts e-waste production totaling 74 million metric tons by 2030, with a trend of 3 to 4% growth annually. The report—released in concordance with International E-Waste Day—cited a 3% annual, global increase in electronics consumption as an explanation for this trend. Further, the WEEE Forum’s study of European electronics consumption habits revealed, “11 of 72 electronic items in an average household are no longer in use or are broken.”

What’s so bad about this increasing amount of e-waste? In short, improper disposal. A mere 17.4% of global e-waste was properly treated and recycled in 2019, per the WEEE Forum’s most recent statistics. That leaves the vast majority to be either thrown in landfills or (illegally) exported to countries with more lenient, or even nonexistent laws regarding e-waste.

This range of problems results from improper disposal, foremost being environmental damage. Inadequate e-waste disposal initiates a series of setbacks to the planet, which ultimately affect people.

Extraction of rare materials—Not only does electronics manufacturing threaten to strip land of finite resources such as minerals and precious metals, but the mining process itself is a pollutant. Per Mongabay, “Mineral extraction consumes gigantic quantities of fresh water and can pollute soil, water and air, while vast open-pit mines drive large-scale land-use change, cause deforestation and threaten biodiversity. Mining, processing, and transporting minerals also uses enormous amounts of energy, generating greenhouse gas emissions.”

Decomposition of electronics—Electronic equipment that reached end-of-life is often carelessly thrown away, destined for a landfill. There, the decomposition of e-waste leads to toxic chemicals seeping into the soil and water supply.

Do-it-yourself component retrieval—When makeshift operations in developing countries attempt to extract valuable components from e-waste, the results can be dreadful for the environment and for the people who perform the task. The Geneva Environment Network cites open-air burning and acid baths among the crude component recovery tactics, practices which can “expose workers to high levels of contaminants such as lead, mercury, beryllium, thallium, cadmium and arsenic, and also brominated flame retardants (BFRs) and polychlorinated biphenyls, which can lead to irreversible health effects, including cancers, miscarriages, neurological damage and diminished IQs.”

As if putting Earth’s ecosystem at risk weren’t enough, companies who improperly dispose their e-waste are also putting their security at risk. Bank account information, sensitive client information, and trade secrets are among the data that can be mined from discarded electronics—even when companies think they’ve managed to wipe all remnants from their past equipment. Secure data destruction is typically a much more involved process than companies comprehend, particularly as dedicated data thieves grow exceedingly capable of extracting valuable information from e-waste.

Fortunately, the problems presented by e-waste are not insurmountable. E-recycling is our greatest method of combatting the potential destruction brought by increasing global electronics production. Not only does e-recycling ensure all toxic materials avoid our ecosystems, but proper recovery of electronics components means resources can be reused in new production, lessening the extraction of new materials.

When possible, whole components (such as circuit boards) are completely cleared of past data, refurbished, and resold to be reused. In other cases, the valuable materials from e-waste are safely, carefully, and professionally extracted. And when we say valuable, we mean it: $55 billion worth of precious metals is thrown away with U.S.-produced e-waste each year!

Meanwhile, the cost of the average data breach has climbed to $4.24 million. Clearly there is a tremendous amount of loss that can be prevented across the board with proper e-recycling.

Though legislation is beginning to catch up with the current e-waste crisis, it’s still woefully inadequate regarding a problem of this magnitude. For example, there is no legislation regarding planned obsolescence—the practice of companies manufacturing products to intentionally either fail or need replacement.

Spreading awareness of the e-waste crisis is perhaps the most important step to solving it. Comparing the mass of e-waste to one of the Seven Wonders of the World will hopefully gain necessary attention. And for those ready to attack this problem head on, contact us to learn how we can better manage your electronic asset disposal and data destruction.

If you are like many Westchester residents, you may have dozens of unwanted computer monitors, keyboards, printers, and old TVs around the house. These items are commonly refered to as e-waste, or electronic waste, and some of these items can cause harm if disposed in the trash. Cathode ray tubes (CRTs) – the primary component in old computer monitors and televisions – contain lead that can potentially contaminate land, air, and water resources.

If you have decided to get rid of e-waste, there are several options for environmentally-sound disposal in Westchester. First, think about donating any useable items, if possible.

To recycle your e-waste, visit the County"s Household Material Recovery Facility (H-MRF) which accepts a number of different types of electronic waste; including, cell phones, laptops, computers televisions and more. For a full list of accepted items that can be dropped off at the H-MRF, see the comprehensive list provided by EWaste+. Drop-offs are available for County residents by convenient appointment, Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.

The New York State electronic waste disposal ban went into effect on January 1, 2015. Consumer electronic waste may not be collected or disposed of as garbage, as required by the NYS Electronic Equipment Recycling and Reuse Act.

You can visit the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation"s Web site for a full list of the types of electronic equipment covered by this law and to learn how to properly manage your electronic waste in an environmentally-responsible manner.

Many Westchester County municipalities offer drop-off programs or curbside pickup for their residents. E-waste drop-off containers are located at some municipal DPW yards throughout the county. Contact your local Municipal Recycling Office for more details. You can also bring your e-waste to the Household Material Recovery Facility.

Other OptionsMany electronics retail centers and most manufacturers also offer take-back programs to their customers. You can learn more about each manufacturer’s plan through information provided by the New York State Department of Conservation or by visiting the manufacturer’s website. Also, be sure to check out the Environmental Protection Agency"s Electronics Donation and Recycling webpage for more information.

Non-residential organizations such as local businesses, schools and institutions should use the Electronics Recycling Markets list of known CRT recyclers or contact the county"s Recycling HelpLine at (914) 813-5425 for further information.

Additional Information About E-WasteE-waste is one of the fastest growing components of solid waste in the United States. It’s no wonder, considering the speed with which these electronic products are replaced with newer, faster, sleeker versions.

In 1998, the National Safety Council Study estimated about 20 million computers became obsolete in one year. Now that number has more than doubled according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA"s) most recent estimates. As technology develops, even more products will be considered e-waste, as circuit boards are added to conventional household appliances.

What concerns solid waste managers is not just the growth in volume and bulkiness of these items – it’s the toxicity of their components. Old TVs can contain up to seven pounds of lead. Besides lead, other contaminants such as mercury, nickel and cadmium can find their way into the water and food supply due to incineration or landfill operations. In 2009, the EPA estimated that up to 75 percent of electronic items are discarded as regular household waste.

The U.S. Department of Commerce estimated that 50 to 80 percent of discarded electronics are exported to developing countries, such as China, where the cost of labor is lower in the absence of environmental legislation or workplace safety standards. Some academic research suggests that the cycle continues, with non-biodegradable toxins returning to the United States in manufactured goods and food products. Another key concern of exporting e-waste is increasing rates of identity theft, from information recovered from hard drives.

Westchester County takes these concerns very seriously: all materials collected by the county are delivered to a licensed electronic waste dismantler that removes and erases information on data storage devices, dismantles all components, and sells materials directly to electronics manufacturers domestically and abroad. In 2013, the county diverted over 1,700 tons of electronics from residents, which would otherwise have been incinerated.

Electronic waste or e-waste in China refers to electronic products that are no longer usable and are therefore dumped or recycled. China is the world"s largest importer and producer of electronic waste

China"s domestic contribution of e-waste is substantial. The Global E-waste Monitor 2020 report found that the amount of annual domestic e-waste generation in China alone reaches approximately 10.1 million tons, thus overtaking the U.S. as the largest e-waste producing country.

The major sources of e-waste processed in China are households, domestic institutions such as schools and hospitals, government agencies and businesses, and equipment manufacturers.

Large amounts of foreign e-waste, mostly from the developed Western world, have been imported into China since the 1970s. Cheaper labor and lax environmental standards attracted e-waste from developed countries that could save much of the cost of processing the waste domestically.One Country, Two Systems policy in 1997, Chinese policies only prevent e-waste from entering mainland China but not for licensed imports at Hong Kong ports.

A 2013 study by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) examining the e-waste trade showed that most of the e-waste originating in developed countries, such as the US, Japan, Korea, and various countries in the European Union (EU), was illegally bound for developing countries, including China.

According to a study done in 2020, China’s formal e-waste recycling industry is quite developed,  following strict regulations, governmental incentives, and the development and expansion of recycling facilities.

A main contributor to China’s e-waste problem is that the majority of e-waste dumped in China - reports vary between 60% and 80% - is handled through illegal informal recycling processes.

While the formal e-waste recycling process in China is contained and regulated, the overwhelming informal sector causes serious environmental hazards. Crude recycling methods, especially the burning of materials, release massive amounts of toxic chemicals like lead, chromium, cadmium, and more.

Lacking the proper methods and necessary safety precautions, informal e-waste recycling is directly responsible for worsening the health of many in China.

A variety of environmental legislations and programs have been issued by the Chinese government in order to regulate the electronic product production and e-waste management sectors.

Effective February 1, 2000, the Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP) passed a regulation entitled Notification on Importation of the Seventh Category of Wastes.

In 2008, the MEP passed Administrative Measures for the Prevention and Control of Environmental Pollution by Electronic Waste - a set of administrative rules requiring all e-waste treatment enterprises to adopt pollution control techniques and register with local government agencies.

In 2011, the Collection and Treatment Decree on Wastes of Electric and Electronic Equipment strengthened national standards for the e-waste treatment sector, setting minimum annual treatment capacities for formal e-waste treatment enterprises. These new set of laws also required treatment plants to adopt pollution prevention principles during the entire disposal process in order to minimize negative environmental impacts.

In 2012, China adopted the extended producer responsibility (EPR) system from the EU, which held manufacturers responsible for the collection and recycling of electronics. Otherwise known as “Producer Takeback,” the EPR management system requires manufacturers to carry out environmentally safe management of their products even after they are discarded.

Though legislation and regulations have been accepted by the developed countries against illegal exportation of e-waste, the high number of illegal shipments continues to exacerbate the e-waste problem in China.Basel Convention out of the EU or the OECD but illegal shipments are still rising in China and other developing countries.

Along with national legislation, several provincial programs have been set in place to address e-waste management issues in more urgent regions, such as the Guangdong, Qingdao, Beijing and the Sichuan provinces. Many of these programs have been aimed at controlling the informal sector and strengthening formal e-waste channels.

In June 2009, China initiated the "Home Appliance Old for New Rebate Program", which first launched in nine cities and provinces considered to be more economically developed.

In order to establish a normative e-waste recycling network, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) designated Qingdao Haier, Hangzhou Dadi, Beijing Huaxing, and other companies, as the national e-waste collection and recycling pilot projects in 2004.United Nations Environment Program were a failure due to the fact that they could not get adequate e-waste collected for efficient operations.

Many companies, like Nintendo, are aware of the problem of e-waste and are developing their own initiatives such as creating collective e-waste reclamation campaigns.

In response to low incentives some companies, like Dell, started to provide compensations to consumers in Beijing and Shanghai of US$0.15 for 1 kg of old computer. In order to receive the incentive consumers had to bring their used computers to local Dell stores at their own expense. The project failed because the financial gains of returning their computer to formal recyclers were lower than the gains from selling computers to informal collectors.

In 1992, the United Nations Basel Convention was established to control the transboundary movement and disposal of hazardous waste. The Basel Convention makes up the global legal infrastructure addressing the transnational trade of e-waste. It is the centerpiece of an international legal regime that has shaped or influenced many countries’ national legislation on e-waste.

The Convention does not impose a complete ban on the international transfer of hazardous waste. The transfer may be allowed under certain conditions, for example, if the state of export does not have the technical capacity and the necessary facilities, capacity or suitable disposal sites in order to dispose of the wastes in question in an environmentally sound and efficient manner. The definition of some of these key terms, “technical capacity,” “necessary facilities,” “environmentally sound and efficient manners,” and “wastes required as raw material” can be rather controversial in practice. Different countries may understand differently what can be counted as “necessary facilities” and what varieties of materials should be seen as “e-waste.

At the global scale, trajectories of global e-waste flows are shaped by the multitude of loopholes, contradictions and ambiguous articles left by the Basel Convention and by different countries’ disparate attitudes towards the e-waste trade.

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But not Jim Puckett. His eyes are fixed on the glowing screen of his laptop. Little orange markers dot a satellite image. He squints at the pixelated terrain trying to make out telltale signs.

Dead electronics make up the world’s fastest-growing source of waste. The United States produces more e-waste than any country in the world. Electronics contain toxic materials like lead and mercury, which can harm the environment and people. Americans send about 50,000 dump trucks worth of electronics to recyclers each year.

Puckett’s organization partnered with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to put 200 geolocating tracking devices inside old computers, TVs and printers. They dropped them off nationwide at donation centers, recyclers and electronic take-back programs — enterprises that advertise themselves as “green,” “sustainable,” “earth friendly” and “environmentally responsible.”

“The trackers are like miniature cell phones,” he said. “The little devices went out and spoke to us, called home regularly, saying ‘this is where I am.’”

About a third of the tracked electronics went overseas — some as far as 12,000 miles. That includes six of the 14 tracker-equipped electronics that Puckett’s group dropped off to be recycled in Washington and Oregon.

The tracked electronics ended up in Mexico, Taiwan, China, Pakistan, Thailand, Dominican Republic, Canada and Kenya. Most often, they traveled across the Pacific to rural Hong Kong.

The next morning Puckett follows the little orange markers to a region of Hong Kong called the New Territories, a long-time agricultural area along the border with mainland China that’s shifted toward industry in recent decades.

He teams up with a Chinese journalist and translator, Dongxia Su, and a local driver, who will help navigate the region. They follow a set of GPS coordinates for one of the tracked electronics. Paved streets become rutted dirt roads. They pass a steady stream of trucks carrying shipping containers from the port.

As they approach their first destination — “One-hundred feet away. Eighty feet. Seventy-seven feet,” Puckett says — they hear sounds of power drills and shattering glass. It’s coming from the other side of a high metal wall made from old shipping containers.

A worker shouts from beyond the fence and Su tells him the group is shopping for used electronics. She says they want to fill a shipping container with printers to refurbish and sell in Pakistan. The door opens.

Inside, workers are dismantling LCD TVs. The ground at their feet is littered with broken white tubes. These fluorescent lamps were made to light up flat-screens. When they break they release invisible mercury vapor. Even a minuscule amount of mercury can be a neurotoxin.

The New Territories used to serve only as a pass-through for smuggled e-waste, Puckett said, where workers would unload shipping containers and put electronics on smaller trucks bound for mainland China.

But a crackdown by the Chinese government on whole electronic imports, part of a border control operation called “Green Fence,” has prevented many electronics from moving across the border.

Puckett has been investigating the afterlife of consumer electronics for nearly two decades. Over the years, his team staked out U.S. recycling operations and followed shipping containers overseas to uncover the environmental and human health consequences of the global e-waste trade.

In 2002, the Basel Action Network’s Jim Puckett tests the water quality near Guiyu, China, where residents cooked electronics to extract precious metals and dumped the leftovers in a nearby river. Courtesy of the Basel Action Network

Many U.S. consumers got their first glimpse of what happens to their discarded electronics in Puckett’s 2001 film “Exporting Harm: The High-Tech Trashing of Asia.” It captured the crude recycling methods taking place in Guiyu, a cluster of villages in southeastern China that has since become known as the world’s biggest graveyard for America’s electronic junk.

In the video, villagers desoldered circuit boards over coal-fired grills, burned plastic casings off wires to extract copper, and mined gold by soaking computer chips in black pools of hydrochloric acid. Researchers later found the region had some of the highest levels of cancer-causing dioxins in the world due to its e-waste industry.

Puckett’s documentary came out more than a decade after nearly every developed nation on the globe had ratified the Basel Convention, an international treaty to stop developed countries from dumping hazardous waste on poorer nations.

The United States is the only industrialized country in the world that hasn’t ratified the treaty. Its hazardous waste is still getting exported to countries with fewer health and environmental safety laws, according to Puckett’s latest investigation.

Over the years Puckett’s attempts to quantify and draw attention to exported electronic waste has drawn criticism from U.S. recyclers who say the problem has been exaggerated.

“The vast majority of electronics collected for recycling in the U.S. are recycled in the U.S.,” said Eric Harris of the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries, a Washington, D.C.-based recycling trade association. “We would really challenge the notion that there’s a mass exodus of equipment that’s leaving in an unprocessed manner.”

Estimates of U.S. e-waste exports vary widely. The United Nations says that between 10 and 40 percent of U.S. e-waste gets exported for dismantling. While the International Trade Commission — through a survey of recyclers — said in 2013 that a mere 0.13 percent of all used electronics collected in the U.S. went abroad for dismantling.

Puckett turned to GPS tracking technology as a new tool to determine just how big the e-waste export problem really might be. He partnered with Carlo Ratti of the Senseable City Lab at MIT to deploy the strategy.

“Tracking is really the first step in order to design a better system,” Ratti said. “One of the surprising things we discovered is how far waste travels. You see this kind of global e-waste flow that actually almost covered the whole planet.”

A pile of printer parts dusted with toners like carbon black, a possible carcinogen known to cause respiratory problems. Photo by Katie Campbell, KCTS9/EarthFix

Puckett’s GPS receiver leads the way to another set of high fences. A sign out front proclaims that it’s farmland. But a look over the fence reveals a lot the size of a football field piled 15 feet high with printers. Workers are breaking them. Their clothes are dusted black with toner ink, a probable carcinogen known to cause respiratory problems.

Su talks to the workers and finds out many are migrants from mainland China, who are residing in Hong Kong without the official documents required for them to legally be there, she says.

“The majority of these workshops tend to operate in a shady manner,” unlicensed and poorly regulated, said Lau, a licensed, second-generation paper and plastics recycler in the region.

Jackson Lau, head of Hong Kong’s recycling business association, said junkyards that import foreign e-waste often dump the components they don’t sell. Photo by Katie Campbell, KCTS9/EarthFix

Electronics are often labeled as raw plastics to get through customs, Lau said, but they’re actually whole devices that the junkyard workers dismantle. They sell the most valuable components to buyers in mainland China, while workers indiscriminately dump the worthless leftovers.

He said a lack of oversight by Hong Kong’s Environmental Protection Department is not only harming workers in the facilities but also the neighboring communities and environment.

Several fires have broken out at junkyards in the past year, including two incidents in March that emitted plumes of toxic black smoke, according to local news reports. Courtesy of Cheung Choi

Several fires have broken out at junkyards in the past year, including two incidents in March that emitted plumes of toxic black smoke, according to local news reports.

Burning e-waste is known to generate dioxins, a family of cancer-causing chemicals that endure for long periods of time in the environment and human body.

“When I was young, I used to drink water directly from the river,” he said through an interpreter. “Now I do not even dare drink water from the well.”

Hong Kong bans the import of hazardous e-waste like cathode ray tubes and flat-screens from the United States and other developed nations, according to Environmental Protection Department spokesperson Heidi Liu.

“On the whole, Hong Kong has been effective in combating hazardous waste shipments,” Liu said, citing 21 instances in the past three years in which cargo loads of e-waste were sent back to the U.S.

Inside a quiet warehouse in the New Territories, Jim Puckett searches for clues in the clutter of electronic waste. Photo by Ken Christensen, KCTS9/EarthFix

Then he finds a clue as to how these materials ended up here. Many boxes bear the logo for Total Reclaim, one of the largest electronics recyclers in the Pacific Northwest with contracts to handle e-waste from the City of Seattle,King County, the University of Washington and the State of Washington.

Total Reclaim scored these big regional recycling contracts in part because it was certified by e-Stewards, a responsible-recycling certification program created by Puckett’s Basel Action Network. Puckett started e-Stewards in 2010 to create a set of ethical and environmentally-friendly industry standards and prevent the export of toxic materials in lieu of federal laws. Total Reclaim was a founding member.

Electronics recyclers with e-Stewards certification can export the raw plastics and metals that come from dismantling electronics. But they adopt a strict no-export policy with regard to whole electronics with hazardous materials still inside. Recyclers can also exported used electronics as long as they’ve been tested and proven to be still functioning.

Last May Puckett’s team dropped two non-working LCD TVs, with tracking devices placed inside, at separate recyclers in Oregon. From there, the tracked electronics traveled to Total Reclaim’s warehouse in south Seattle. Then they went to the Port of Seattle, across the Pacific Ocean to the Port of Hong Kong and ultimately to two junkyards in the New Territories.

Total Reclaim wasn’t the only leading domestic e-waste recycler that collected non-working electronics with tracking devices inside that went overseas, the Basel Action Network concluded through its investigation.

In 2004 Dell created a take-back program called Dell Reconnect. That made it the first major computer manufacturer to ban the export of non-working electronics to developing countries. The computer maker partners with the nonprofit thrift store chain Goodwill Industries, which collects any brand of old computer for free to be refurbished or recycled.

The investigation focused on Dell’s program after whistleblowers drew Puckett’s attention. BAN dropped off 28 tracked electronics at participating Goodwill locations and determined that six of the tracking devices went abroad — to Hong Kong, Taiwan, mainland China and Thailand.

Beth Johnson, head of Dell’s producer responsibility programs, said the company conducts regular audits of Goodwill and vets downstream recycling partners.

A tracking device planted in a computer dropped off at a Dell Reconnect location led Puckett here, an abandoned field strewn with LCD monitors, CRT monitors, camcorders and keyboards. Photo by Ken Christensen, KCTS9/EarthFix

Goodwill’s public relations official declined requests for an interview and instead issued a statementFriday after Puckett briefed officials about the findings of his group’s investigation.

“Goodwill Industries International is committed to understanding new insights into the e-cycling space from the final report,” the statement said, and “encourages Goodwill organizations participating in the Dell Reconnect program to evaluate the continuation of their contracts with Dell” and to take steps to ensure that electronics are responsibly recycled.

In all, BAN’s investigation found that 65 tracked devices went through U.S. recyclers and ended up overseas. The results showed that some of those exported electronics had been dropped off at green-certified recyclers. BAN plans to conduct further investigations before reporting more about these recyclers.

“I’m getting disillusioned by certification programs,” Puckett said. “It is clear that these certifications need to be better enforced and we intend to do just that.”

In a phone interview, co-owner Craig Lorch acknowledged that some of Total Reclaim’s LCD flatscreen monitors have been shipped to Hong Kong, despite the company’s no-export policy.

Both the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality and the Washington Department of Ecology have launched investigations into whether Total Reclaim violated their state hazardous waste laws.

Oregon regulators have also asked the state Department of Justice to open an investigation into whether Total Reclaim violated consumer protection laws.

Lorch said economic realities forced the company to renege on pledges to recycle all the waste that they collect. In recent years, LCD monitors have become a larger portion of the waste stream, but the flat-screens are expensive and time-consuming to dismantle.

In January, copper fetched half its 2011 price, hitting the lowest level in seven years. Plastics prices have bottomed out, recyclers say. At the height of the market, Total Reclaim sold steel for $300 a ton. The price recently fell to $60 a ton, Lorch said.

Plastics and metals from dismantled electronics await their turn to enter a machine that shreds and sorts them into commodity type. Photo by Ken Christensen, KCTS9/EarthFix

In a bear market for commodities, exporting waste is more profitable than processing it domestically. Recyclers simply fill a shipping container with whole electronics and an e-waste broker arranges for pick up.

Printers, which hold little value, and LCD TVs, which are expensive to recycle because of the tedious dismantling work associated with mercury, make good candidates for export.

“This e-waste recycling business is like the wild, wild west,” said Wendy Neu, a 30-year veteran of the recycling and scrap metal industry. “People are getting paid to recycle these materials through government programs and then are exporting to China and Africa.”

Neu is the CEO of Hugo Neu, a New York-based e-waste recycler and e-Steward, that just months ago decided to shift its business model away from recycling. Now it only refurbishes electronics for resale. Neu, a board member of BAN, said they couldn’t compete with recyclers that spent pennies on the pound to export, while Neu’s company hired workers and paid for the latest advanced recycling technology.

The Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries has opposed versions of those bills, arguing that these types of laws on exports would harm the recycling sector and are unnecessary because the industry is well-regulated by existing federal and state laws.

The country is home to a patchwork of state laws. In half of states, landfilling electronics is legal. Some states, including Washington and Oregon, have paired landfill bans with laws that incentivize local recycling.

The two Northwest states use “producer responsibility” laws similar to those in the European Union. Electronics manufacturers pay a fee to the state on electronics sold locally. The money helps subsidize approved recyclers like Total Reclaim, which recoup money through the program based on the amount of electronics the company collects.

But according to BAN’s tracking data, even audited companies were found to be exporting, including some in Oregon, Washington, California, Michigan and New Jersey. In addition, states don’t have jurisdiction to ban exports.

“There’s definitely not enough perp walks being done,” said John Shegerian, chief executive of Electronics Recycling International, the largest e-waste recycling firm in the country. “We need to step up enforcement to match the certification programs we have.”

About 20,000 new electronic devices will be released to U.S. consumers this year. More than 1.4 billion smartphones will be sold globally, five times the amount sold five years ago.

1. A study by the Hong Kong Baptist University found surface soils in Guiyu had high levels of cancer-causing dioxins. A different study from Shantou University Medical College found high levels of lead in children’s blood in Guiyu. Late last year, the Chinese government ordered thousands of unregulated businesses in Guiyu to move into a newly built industrial park, an effort to clean up the industry.↩

2. Samson Lai, deputy director of the department, said junkyards only need a license if they process e-waste that’s considered chemical waste, which includes only cathode ray tube monitors and batteries in bulk — not LCD flat-screens or printers.↩

3. Many of those government institutions have signed up as “e-Steward Enterprises,” telling the public they only work with the industry’s certified recyclers.↩

4. Some of the Goodwill locations in the Dell Reconnect program dismantle electronics. At the Goodwill locations that don’t dismantle e-waste, Dell transports the waste to other recycling partners. The company declined to disclose those partners.↩

5. The Environmental Protection Agency has a rule that aims to prevent export of CRT monitors, the boxy computer and TV monitors that were have been out of production since flat-screen technology drove them out of the market nearly a decade ago. The law requires U.S. e-waste collectors to notify the EPA and get written approval from the receiving country before exporting these monitors, each of which carries four pounds of lead.↩

6. ISRI says it would support a ban of exports of used electronics for the purpose of landfilling or incineration in other countries, but that the Basel Convention is too sweeping in its requirements.↩

This report first appeared on EarthFix’s website. EarthFix is a public media project of Oregon Public Broadcasting and Boise State Public Radio, Idaho Public Television, KCTS 9 Seattle, KUOW Puget Sound Public Radio, Northwest Public Radio and Television, Southern Oregon Public Television and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

The New Territories used to serve only as a pass-through for smuggled e-waste, Puckett says, where workers would unload shipping containers and put electronics on smaller trucks bound for mainland China.

But a crackdown by the Chinese government on the import of whole non-working imports, part of a border control operation called “Green Fence,” has prevented many electronics from moving across the border.

Puckett has been investigating the afterlife of consumer electronics for nearly two decades. Over the years, his team staked out U.S. recycling operations and followed shipping containers overseas to uncover the environmental and human health consequences of the global e-waste trade.

Many U.S. consumers got their first glimpse of what happens to their discarded electronics in Puckett’s 2001 film Exporting Harm: The High-Tech Trashing of Asia. It captured the crude recycling methods taking place in Guiyu, a cluster of villages in southeastern China that has since become known as the world’s biggest graveyard for America’s electronic junk.

In the video, villagers desoldered circuit boards over coal-fired grills, burned plastic casings off wires to extract copper, and mined gold by soaking computer chips in black pools of hydrochloric acid. Researchers later found the region had some of the highest levels of cancer-causing dioxins due to its e-waste industry.

Puckett’s documentary came out more than a decade after nearly every developed nation on the globe had ratified the Basel Convention, an international treaty to stop developed countries from dumping hazardous waste on poorer nations.

The U.S. is the only industrialized country in the world that hasn’t ratified the treaty. Its hazardous waste is still getting exported to countries with fewer health and environmental safety laws, according to Puckett’s latest investigation.

Over the years Puckett"s attempts to quantify and draw attention to exported electronic waste has drawn criticism from U.S. recyclers who say the problem has been exaggerated.

"The vast majority of electronics collected for recycling in the U.S. are recycled in the U.S.," says Eric Harris of the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries, a Washington, D.C-based recycling trade association. "We would really challenge the notion that there"s a mass exodus of equipment that"s leaving in an unprocessed manner."

Estimates of U.S. e-waste exports vary widely. The United Nations says that between 10 percent and 40 percent of U.S. e-waste gets exported for dismantling. While the International Trade Commission—through a survey of recyclers—said in 2013 that a mere 0.13 percent of all used electronics collected in the U.S. went abroad for dismantling.

Puckett turned to GPS tracking technology as a new tool to determine just how big the e-waste export problem really might be. He partnered with Carlo Ratti of the Senseable City Lab at MIT to deploy the strategy.

“Tracking is really the first step in order to design a better system,” Ratti says. “One of the surprising things we discovered, is how far waste travels. You see this kind of global e-waste flow that actually almost covered the whole planet.”

Puckett’s GPS receiver leads the way to another set of high fences. A sign out front proclaims that it’s farmland. But a look over the fence reveals a lot the size of a football field piled 15-feet high with printers. Workers are breaking them. Their clothes are dusted black with toner ink, a probable carcinogen known to cause respiratory problems.

Su talks to the workers and finds out many are migrants from mainland China who are residing in Hong Kong without the official documents required for them to legally be there, she says.

“The majority of these workshops tend to operate in a shady manner,” unlicensed and poorly regulated, says Lau, a licensed, second-generation paper and plastics recycler in the region.

Electronics are often labeled as raw plastics to get through customs, Lau said, but they’re actually whole devices that the junkyard workers dismantle. They sell the most valuable components to buyers in mainland China, while workers indiscriminately dump the worthless leftovers.

He says a lack of oversight by Hong Kong’s Environmental Protection Department is not only harming workers in the facilities but also the neighboring communities and environment.

Several fires have broken out at junkyards in the past year, including two incidents in March that emitted plumes of toxic black smoke, according to local news reports.

Burning e-waste is known to generate dioxins, a family of cancer-causing chemicals that endure for long periods of time in the environment and human body.

“When I was young, I used to drink water directly from the river,” he says through an interpreter. “Now I do not even dare drink water from the well.”

Hong Kong bans the import of hazardous e-waste like cathode ray tubes and flat-screens from the United States and other developed nations, according to Environmental Protection Department spokesperson Heidi Liu.

“On the whole, Hong Kong has been effective in combatting hazardous waste shipments,” Liu says, citing 21 instances in the past three years in which cargo loads of e-waste were sent back to the United States.

Then he finds a clue as to how these materials ended up here. Many boxes bear the logo for Total Reclaim, one of the largest electronics recyclers in the Pacific Northwest, with contracts to handle e-waste from the City of Seattle, King County, the University of Washington, and the State of Washington.

Total Reclaim scored these big regional recycling contracts in part because it was certified by e-Stewards, a recycling certification program created by Puckett’s Basel Action Network. Puckett started e-Stewards in 2010 to create a set of ethical and environmentally friendly industry standards and prevent the export of toxic materials in lieu of federal laws. Total Reclaim was a founding member.

Electronics recyclers with e-Stewards certification can export the raw plastics and metals that come from dismantling electronics. But they adopt a strict no-export policy with regard to whole, non-working electronics with hazardous materials still inside. They can also export used electronics as long as they"ve been tested and proven to be still functioning.

Last May, Puckett’s team dropped two non-working LCD TVs, with tracking devices placed inside, at separate recyclers in Oregon. From there, the tracked electronics traveled to Total Reclaim’s warehouse in south Seattle. Then they went to the Port of Seattle, across the Pacific Ocean to the Port of Hong Kong and ultimately to two junkyards in the New Territories.

Total Reclaim wasn’t the only leading domestic e-waste recycler that collected non-working electronics with tracking devices inside that went overseas, the Basel Action Network concluded through its investigation.

In 2004, Dell created a take-back program called Dell Reconnect. That made it the first major computer manufacturer to ban the export of non-working electronics to developing countries. The computer maker partners with nonprofit thrift-store chain Goodwill Industries, which collects any brand of old computer for free to be refurbished or recycled.

The investigation focused on Dell’s program after whistleblowers drew Puckett’s attention. BAN dropped off 28 tracked electronics at participating Goodwill locations and determined that six of the tracking devices went abroad—to Hong Kong, Taiwan, mainland China and Thailand.

Beth Johnson, head of Dell’s producer responsibility programs, says the company conducts regular audits of Goodwill and vets downstream recycling partners.

Goodwill’s public relations official declined requests for an interview and instead issued a statement Friday after Puckett briefed officials about the findings of his group"s investigation.

"Goodwill Industries International is committed to understanding new insights into the e-cycling space from the final report," the statement states, and "encourages Goodwill organizations participating in the Dell Reconnect program to evaluate the continuation of their contracts with Dell" to take steps to ensure that electronics are responsibly recycled.

In all, BAN’s investigation found that 65 tracked devices went through U.S. recyclers and ended up overseas. The results showed that some of those exported electronics had been dropped off at green-certified recyclers. BAN plans to conduct further investigations before reporting more about these recyclers.

“I’m getting disillusioned by certification programs,” Puckett said. "It is clear that these certifications need to be better enforced and we intend to do just that."

In a phone interview, co-owner Craig Lorch acknowledged that some of Total Reclaim"s LCD flat-screen monitors have been shipped to Hong Kong, despite the company’s no-export policy.

Both the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality and the Washington Department of Ecology have launched investigations into whether Total Reclaim violated their