Downright Dirty!

The EU’s directive – promoting the recycling of potentially hazardous electronic equipment – was introduced in 2003 and, despite the regulations, according to Europa, an association interested in European environmental issues and policies, only a third of electrical waste in Britain is appropriately treated, with most finding its way into non-EU countries. Because of the major environmental hazards associated with such widespread abuse, the European Commission has proposed changes to the current regulations and aims to raise the amount of e-waste that is disposed of appropriately, and decrease the number that goes to final disposal.

The attacks on the current legislation involving the recycling of electrical equipment have been made apparent after several investigative projects were carried out deliberately to scrutinize the system.

Earlier this year Greenpeace uncovered that obsolete goods continue to contaminate developing countries, an exposé that demonstrated the intensity of the failings of the system. Greenpeace campaigners placed a GPS tracking device inside an unusable television and then threw it onto a UK recycling “tip”. Instead of adhering to WEEE’s directive of safely dismantling all electronic goods in the UK or Europe, the television was tracked to Nigeria. According to Greenpeace, “at no point was the device checked before being exported”.

Based on their findings, Greenpeace stated that there are insufficient audit trails instituted between the UK and countries like Africa and China, where thousands of potentially hazardous equipment ends up.

As a result of Greenpeace’s assertions, the UK’s Environment Agency was faced with a bombardment of criticism for its apparent failure to investigate sufficiently the transgressions that have enabled the illegal exportation of computers to Africa to become so rife. In their defense, a spokeswoman for the Environment Agency said it did not have the authority to investigate waste that had left the UK. The spokeswoman commented:

“If we thought that there may be evidence held abroad that relates to an investigation of offenses in England in the form of witnesses and forensic evidence that are vital to us bringing a case to court, we would consider securing that evidence, but only through the correct legal channels. We would not just go and collect witness statements abroad without reference to our own and the foreign country’s criminal justice systems.”

In response to their reported failings, the Environment Agency have carried out a series of recent raids on industrial sites across the country, to ensure businesses are adhering to the WEEE law. At two of the locations investigated, officials found hundreds of boxes packed with various electronic waste, ready to be exported to Africa, where the discarded equipment would be stripped down for raw materials. Chris Smith, the Environment Agency’s national enforcement service project manager, told the Guardian:

“Our investigations have found that the majority of this equipment is beyond repair and is being stripped down under appalling conditions in Africa. But the law is clear – electrical waste must be recycled in the UK, not sent to developing countries in Africa where unsafe dismantling puts human health and the environment at risk.”

Scrap metal has long been a lucrative market for those astute enough to understand it as a profitable product. Computer chips are like gold in the metals trade, and have always been a rewarding find. But it is the consequence of this increasingly prominent trade to the well-being of the environment and the individuals involved in “shredding the scrap”, many of whom are from developing countries, that is particularly worrying. Ted Smith, a leading environmentalist in the US, told The Guardian:

“Chips are removed from circuit boards over open fires and give off lead fumes in the process. Children are digging out carbon black from toner cartridges. Other components are put into acid baths in sweatshops. In lots of parts of the world, the reclamation takes place by the side of ditches and rivers and poisonous chemicals leach into the environment.”

According to the Department of Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform there are 40 government compliance schemes set up in the UK designed to buy and recycle obsolete items on behalf of different manufacturing divisions. Compared to most other European countries, which only have three or four schemes in operation, some experts in the field insist that the number is excessive, especially when many of the schemes are failing. Jon Godfrey, director of Sims Recycling Solutions, Europe’s largest recycling facility for electronic waste, is of this opinion commenting:

“The compliance schemes are meant to supply the government with a breakdown of the equipment they recycle so it can attribute value to the data they collect. But most have not submitted the data, defeating the point of the regulation.”

Godfrey also reiterated how the prevailing abuse of e-waste, and the confusing laws in Britain, are unfortunately at the cost of the environment.

“The statistics have proved that prevalent abuse of regulations to allow unscrupulous businesses and authorities to sweep WEEE under the carpet to the detriment of the environment,” said Godfrey to the Guardian.

However, it is not only businesses in the UK that are at fault. The Environment Agency is also blaming the British general public who routinely fail to dispose of electric waste through the correct channels, which is proving highly unfavorable to the environment.

Gabrielle Pickard for RT