With the latest corporate fashion trend of going “green” and being all about “sustainability” springing up across thousands of offices, you would think that it’s about time we take such initiatives as recycling seriously. But, and you know there was a “but” coming… do you know where that old PC or laptop that you begged IT to replace goes?

African children on a hustle at a local e-waste dump site

I can speak for my company, well only for the 2 events over the last 4 years in which our IT department gave us “old” (still Pentium 4) working PCs and laptops for free… but still though, what happens to the stuff that doesn’t work, or the stuff that is too old to find a nice, warm, cozy, happy home on a wooden table in someone’s basement or apartment? Well, given the theme and issues discussed in this blog, it should come as no surprise to you that the junk ends up in Africa… West Africa… Lagos, Nigeria and Accra, Ghana, among other places I’m sure (Guiyu, Guangdong Province, China was featured on CBS’s 60 Minutes as one of the places).

The 60 Minutes piece above did well illustrating how hundreds of people in the U.S. drove up to recycling centers with their electronic trash thinking they were doing good for the environment, while in reality some of their stuff ended up at toxic dump sites in poor areas of the world. Poor men, women, and children struggling to make a living break down these computers, burn the circuit boards and try to extract chips and various other components for re-sale, while directly poisoning themselves with lead, mercury, and other hazardous materials, and weakening their communities in the process. Here we are thinking we’re helping the developing world by giving them old electronics that they can use at schools, etc, while in reality, it’s estimated that less than 25% of the electronics we recycle actually work, meaning that the rest ends at dumps for the poor to scavenge through. Local governments at these dump sites get rewarded for looking the other way while gangs  run the operations, even though there are explicit regulations and initiatives from as far back as the early 90s (check out BAN for more), prohibiting the dumping of toxic components in “someone else’s backyard.”

This type of stuff makes me feel paranoid about playing “Captain Planet” and dropping off my old cell phones or batteries at recycling bins at my local electronics or hardware store. Companies use the whole “green” movement to improve on their corporate image, while their motives are anything but altruistic. This e-waste is sold and re-sold in a process that can be easily interpreted as the childish action of brushing something under a carpet and calling it clean.

By no means do I want to appear like I got the solutions to all the world’s problems, but I think we can do so much better. Organizations like e-Stewards are already creating ways to identify ethical recyclers, so let’s continue to push for more transparency in the recycling industry. Don’t tell me your old Gateway or Dell is going to be crunching away numbers at a village in Kenya or Tanzania unless you are 100% certain about its destination and its intended use. There are also better avenues to bring technology to the poor corners of the world. Initiatives like One Laptop Per Child are a prime example of organizations getting together to bring laptops to the under-privileged.  Other recycling alternatives can include the use of old electronics in our schools to teach kids about science and technology. Sites like Instructables have tons of cool projects that can help kids geek it up early by learning how to turn old PCs/electronics into servers, firewalls, widget frames, or even non-techy things like fish tanks, handbags, and jewlery.

Manufacturers and municipalities, from Panasonic and JVC to B-More’s finest, should try harder to make sure their stuff is recycled safely. Let’s not put people in situations where they have to choose between poverty and poison.

Some additional info: Known and suspected routes of e-waste dumping, Wiki on e-Waste

BAN’s The Digital Dump: Official Trailer also below:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0xpRk7MYNg&eurl=http://www.ban.org/films/TheDigitalDumpTrailer.html&feature=player_embedded]

.. or $5.72, I don’t have the receipt on me to double-check, but it really doesn’t matter… the question is, what did you spend on your lunch today? did you work for that lunch? how hard exactly did you work for it? would you be willing to search for pieces of copper or cobalt by scraping through mountains of mining waste, and then washing your findings in cholera-infested waters, all for your lunch? would you be willing to kill for it? all this to earn some food… all this to earn $3.00 (on a good day)… even less than the $5.71 or $5.72.. whatever.

You think ppl in the last commodities bubble got it bad, when they lost their investments, think again. Some Congolese and Zambian men, women, and children, are working til they drop, sacrificing safe working conditions, so that they could take the few ounces of metal and sell them to their local Chinaman (We all know how hungry China is… see my posts below). What’s worse is the fact that these poor victims were somehow convinced by their overseers to block roads to their mining camps and stop any journalists that would report on their dire conditions, at all costs, even death. Because whoever convinced them, told them that if the world finds out about their plight for survival under such dire conditions, then the mining operations will be closed, and they would not get their $3.00 (and that’s on a good day).

It hurt me deep inside when I thought about my Subway lunch today… shameless exploitation for $3.00/day so that the Congolese and Zambian government officials (among others) can keep their political and economic commitments in this abusive relationship with China… cuz if they don’t there will be no cash for their countries (or their fat pockets).

Across the pond, we can print billions of dollars to bailout the greedy that bit a little more than they could chew, but we cannot improve on our aid commitments (the US ranks in the bottom 3 out of 21 countries). We easily turn our backs at such exploitations, because Africa has nothing to offer for us. Where is the human conscience and its dignity? I think it also needs a bailout.