Where computers go to die -- and kill

Over a billion computers are now in use worldwide -- over 200 million in the United States, which has the world's highest per capita concentration of PCs. The average life span of an American computer is about three to five years and some 30 million become obsolete here each year. According to the International Association of Electronics Recyclers, approximately 3 billion pieces of consumer electronics will be scrapped by 2010. Overall, high-tech electronics are the fastest-growing part of the municipal waste stream both in the U.S. and Europe.

The EPA estimates that only about 10 percent of all obsolete consumer electronics are recycled. The rest are stored somewhere, passed on to second users, or simply tossed in the trash. The EPA's most recent estimate is that over 2 million tons of e-waste end up in U.S. landfills each year. As Jim Fisher of Salon reported in 2000, a toxic stew from discarded computers leaches into groundwater surrounding landfills.

Current design, particularly of equipment now entering the waste stream, makes separating electronics' dozens of materials labor-intensive. "Almost every piece of equipment is different," says Greg Sampson of Earth Protection Services, a national electronics recycler. The process almost always involves manual labor and, once the electronics are dismantled, sophisticated machinery is required to safely separate and process metals and plastics.

The fragile CRTs with leaded glass used in traditional desktop monitors and TV screens pose a particular recycling challenge. Metals are the easiest materials to recycle and the most valuable -- circuit boards typically contain gold, silver and other precious metals. Plastics are the peskiest, as many different kinds may be used in a single piece of equipment and markets for recycled plastics are far less established than those for scrap metals.

E-Scrap News, a recycling industry trade magazine, features about 950 e-scrap processors in its North American database -- a list that doesn't include nonprofits or reuse organizations. And not all electronics recyclers offer the same services. Some dismantle the equipment and recover materials themselves. But many simply collect equipment and do initial disassembly, then contract with others for materials recovery.

According to the International Association of Electronics Recyclers, this business now generates about $700 million annually in the U.S. and is increasing steadily. Most recyclers charge fees to process equipment. But essentially profits come from the sale of materials recovered or by selling equipment or components to those who will do so. There's also a speculative aspect to the business, especially when the scrap metal market is booming and the value of recyclable circuit boards increasing -- it reached an all-time high in January 2006 at $5,640 a ton.

Some recyclers -- mostly smaller shops -- acquire used equipment at surplus property auctions, on eBay or other such resale outlets, then resell equipment whole or in parts by the pound to what Houghton calls "materials brokers" and "chop shops." One batch of equipment may end up being sold to a series of brokers before it reaches a materials processor, and much of what these brokers deal in ends up overseas where costs are lowest. "If a company is buying your electronic scrap or untested equipment," rather than charging for this service, "it's highly likely that it's going overseas," says Sarah Westervelt of BAN.

In 2000, Salon's Fisher noted that U.S. computer manfacturers bucked the European trend of instigating convenient buy-back programs for used computers -- a resistance that continues today. Since 2000, the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, an environmental group, has maintained a "report card" of computer makers' environmental progress in recycling and manufacturing. In its most recent report card, it notes that the "most alarming trends in the electronics industry in the United States continue to be staunch opposition to producer take back programs."

Currently, there is no consistent, industrywide or government program to certify or license electronics recyclers. As a result, says Houghton, "It's extremely difficult to peel back the onion far enough to find out where the equipment goes. It may change hands two, three or four times before it leaves the country." And, he explains, "The cost of shipping a 40-foot container full of computers, relative to the value of the equipment," even at scrap prices, "is pretty low." With dealers from China to Eastern Europe and Africa ready to buy used electronics for scrap or reuse, and U.S. domestic transportation and recycling costs high, it's actually more profitable to load up a container and send it to Nigeria or Taizhou than it is to process equipment at home.

So traveling the seas in the shadows of legitimate high-tech exports are huge containers that may hold as many as 1,000 used computers. They're loaded on ships at East Coast and Gulf Coast ports in the U.S. for Atlantic crossings, or at European ports, including Felixstowe, Le Havre and Rotterdam, arriving in West Africa by way of Spain. Others cross the Mediterranean from Israel and Dubai, or travel Asian Pacific routes from the U.S., Japan, Taiwan and Korea.

Compounding the difficulty of tracking an individual computer is the fact that several different companies -- including freight consolidators at both exporting and importing ports, some located in countries distant from both buyers and sellers -- are responsible for moving these goods. A recycler in Texas may well be unaware of who is unloading or receiving his goods in China or Africa. Many international freight shippers make it easy to track a whole container -- just punch the number into their Web site -- but information about who's shipping what is not public information.

Even in Europe, where e-waste exports are regulated, illegal shipments slip through. "From our work, we have no doubt that there are improper shipments of waste," says Roy Watkinson of the U.K. Environment Agency, which in October of 2005 reported that 75 percent of the containers it had inspected that month contained some illegal waste, including e-scrap. A European group, IMPEL, a network of environmental regulators, has been monitoring this trade, and has found ships loaded with damaged computer equipment sailing out of Wales bound for Pakistan in containers marked "plastics."

According to accounts by Lai Yun of Greenpeace China and Mark Dallura of Chase Electronics in Philadelphia, and news reports from China, corruption is common among customs officials there. Dallura told the Washington Post in 2003 that he ships discarded computers to China via Taiwanese middlemen. "I sell it to [the Taiwanese] in Los Angeles and how they get it there is not my concern," Dallura said. "They pay the customs officials off. Everybody knows it. They show up with Mercedeses, rolls of hundred-dollar bills. This is not small-time. This is big-time stuff. There's a lot of money going on in this." Today, loads of e-scrap continue to enter the country despite the Chinese government's official crackdown on these imports.

Next page: Tracking a junked computer in Nigeria back to a public school in Wisconsin