Electronic Waste:

What's Here and What's Next

Stephanie Alarcón
16 Jul 2010
 Hi, I'm Stephanie!
• Sysadmin and MES student @ UPenn
• Board, not plank, of Hive76
• Plant nerd
• Advocate of the safety bicycle
 Agenda

• Why I'm here

• What is e-waste and why care?
• What's the life cycle?
• What laws govern it, and how well?
• What can we do and where do we need
brains?
• What industries are in a similar position?
Why I'm Here
• Computers + tree-hugging -> e-waste
• Sysadmins have to chuck servers
• Regulatory policy and environmental
justice
I'm not X, therefore I don't know jack
about Y.
● Chemist ● Structure of substances,
health implications
● Materials engineer ● Feasible alternative
materials

● Better chemical and

● Any kind of
mechanical processes
engineer

● Economist ● Detailed modeling of other

ways of doing business
 What is it and why care?

• What is considered e-waste

• Quantities, growth predictions
• What's in it
• Why it's hard to take apart
• Risks, costs and externalities
What is e-waste or WEEE?
 We make a lot of it

• Do you manage physical infrastructure?

• What's the average lifespan?
• How big is your personal stash of crap?
• How much have you tossed?
How much is a lot?

• Measuring is tough
• Sales data X life span
• Estimates from volume of junk
• Municipal vs. non-municipal waste
 No, really, how much?

• 24 devices per US household (CEA)

• US: 5-7M tons junked every year, EU 10.3M
new devices/year
• 3B units potential scrap 2003-2010 in US
(IAER)
• US Gov't 10K/week!
• US: 82% landfilled, 18% “recycled”
Moore's Law applies to waste, too

• Fastest-growing component of US
municipal waste and European
manufacturing waste
• 1998 - 2007: doubled
• EU is changing collection goals from per-
person to % of sales
It contains valuable stuff

• Conflict diamonds? Conflict coltan

• Peak oil? Peak tantalum
• Coal mountaintop removal? Gold
mining
20 tons mine production ->18ct ring
 1 ton boards > 17 tons ore

• 40-800 X more concentrated than ore

• Only 30% of world's gold from scrap
Fimiston Open Pit (Kalgoorlie Super Pit)
Western Australia
Contact circuitry

• Copper
• Gold
• Platinum
• Nickel
• Cobalt
• Tungsten
• Molybdenum
So we're sitting on a gold mine?

• Awesome!
• Then why is tracking waste so hard?
• And why is reclaiming the good stuff so
hard?
• And why are we sending so much to
the dump and to Asia and Africa?
 The good stuff is hard to get to
• Lots of screws and glue
• Desolder components
• Dissolve and precipitate gold
• De-vein or burn copper cables
• Plastic – hard to identify and recycle
• Takes time and energy (stamina and BTUs)
to extract the good stuff
It contains nasty stuff

• Lead 6.3%
• Beryllium
• Cadmium
• Barium
• PVC
• Mercury
•
PCBs [disambiguationneeded!]
• Brominated Flame Retardants (PBB or PBDE)
Stupid (&) expensive system
• Well, I think so anyway, but I'm not an
economist
• Planned obsolescence: 3 years? Really?
• No take-back, little design for the environment
• Why can't everything be as swappable as a PCI
card?
• Leasing?
 Exports
• Labor is cheaper abroad and scrap prices are
low, so we export
• Legal in US
• Hard to track, hard to enforce
• When we say “recycle”, we usually mean
“export”
Data security: Lolwhut?

• BAN “Digital Dump”: European forensics

uncovered child welfare data
• Frontline “Digital Dumping Ground”:
Northrup Grumman federal contracts
• Hard drives scoured for scams
Disassembly is tough and dangerous
• Goes where labor is cheap and
regulations are lax
• Those places tend to have poor people
and bad worker protection
• Perfect storm for environmental injustice
• Good Magazine has a great summary
video
It devastates people and places
• Acid rivers
• Wrecked water supply
• Hazardous soil
• Lianjiang River: 1338 X EPA safe
chromium level, 600 X cadmium level
It screws up markets
• Used computers depress local tech
markets, like used clothing and textiles
• Junk “donations” get dumped
• 25-75% of shipments are useless
Workers take on huge risk
● Fumes, flame retardants from burnt
cables and plastics, gold dissolution,
desoldering
● Scant protection from nitric and
hydrochloric acid
● Children smash CRT lead curtain to get to
cooper yoke
● Plastic ID by smell
 Guiyu, China
©2008 Basel Action Network (BAN).
 Guiyu, China
©2001 Basel Action Network (BAN).
 Guiyu, China
©2008 Basel Action Network (BAN).
 This is environmental
and economic injustice.
 “What
Africa
needs...
is the ability
to meet its
own local need.”
-Shina Badaru,
Founder, editor of
Technology Times
 Life cycle

• Resource usage
• Manufacture and waste
• Disposal
• Broadening life cycle analysis
Life cycle
• Best: cradle-to-cradle
• Better than nothing: cradle-to-grave
• What we do: cradle-to-checkout
 Chip manufacture

● Source: E. Williams, “Environmental impacts of

microchip manufacture”, UN University
 Some Fine Print
Doping gases Chip Etching
● Boron
● Acid: hydrofluoric nitric,
● Phosphorus phosphoric, sulfuric
● Argon ● Ammonia
● Arsine
● Fluoride
● Silane
● Sodium hydroxide (lye)
● Phosphine
● Arsenic ● Isopropyl alchohol
● Antimony ● Methyl-3-methoxypropionate
● Beryllium
● Tetramethylammonium hydroxide
● Chromium
● Selenium ● Hydroxyl monoethanolamine

● Acetone

● Chromium trioxide

● Methyl ethyl ketone

● Methyl alcohol

● Xylene
 Energy and Water Use
• Only 25% of energy used for a 32MB DRAM chip is
during use. The rest is manufacture.
• 6000 MJ to make a computer
• Semiconductor site: 4 million gallons of water / day
• 1 DRAM chip: 32,000 liters
•

•
 Waste before sale
• Electronics: 70% of hazardous waste
• 2 pounds of waste per pound of computer,
1/3 hazardous
• Nasty stuff ends up in our food, our water,
and us
Then we use it for a while...
Then it's obsolete.
Trash
• landfill (82%)
Stash
• 234.6M devices stored in homes as of 2007 (EPA)
Donate
• Great, but then recipient is responsible for disposal
Recycle
• Voluntary audit like E-Stewards.org
• Export: 10.2 million computers from US to Asia in
2002 alone
It's really obsolete?
● Glass gets recycled domestically
● No domestic market for plastic until recent
green marketing
● CRT monitor export 10X more profitable
than recycling
● Trade imbalance: US exports more junk
tech than new tech
 Lease vs. Own?
• Buy the use, not the object
• UNEP researchers in Germany are
interested
• Seems to be working for solar panels
• Makes MakerBunny cry :-(
“Dematerialization”
• In the future, everything is made of aether,
right? Don't we use less?
• Tiny cell phones -> less landfill waste?
• 2 gram microchip: 1600 grams of fuel and
chemicals
• Materials used: 630 X the mass of the
final product
“...The amount of materials...is hundreds, if not
thousands of times greater than the quantity
actually embodied in the chip. ...It means that
people like Alan Greenspan...who have cited
microelectronics as an example of radical
"dematerialization" have misunderstood the
situation...”
-Eric Williams, United Nations University
What if manufacturers took out the trash?
• Why should my city dump carry a
manufacturer's disposal costs?
• End of contract swap?
• If substances are rare and the stuff is
easy to disassemble, manufacturers
should want their stuff back to reuse.
• Whoah, that makes sense!
 But toxicity is cheap...

For some definition of cheap.

 Better way: EPR
• Extended Producer Responsibility!
• See: John McNabb's talk earlier today
• Design for the Environment, REACH
standards
• HP: “Ideally, from the manufacturer's point
of view, they'd like to get their own stuff
back.”
 Even industry wants regulation
• Even playing field
• No guessing at new regulations
• 4 State programs carry $25M of dead
weight
 Regulation and Enforcement

• Basel Convention
• EU

• US – Federal and State

• Voluntary efforts
Basel Convention
• Gold standard of international hazmat treaties
• Signed 1992, 172 parties
• Covers generation, management,
transboundary movement of waste
• Guess who's not a signatory?
 EU: WEEE and RoHS
• WEEE: Manufacturer
responsibility
• RoHS: Restriction of
Hazardous
Substances
• Impact of RoHS: race
to the top
 WEEE Small Container

“With a convenient double entry self closing lid the

Taylor WEEE Bin is ideally suited for the collection of
small WEEE.” - Taylor, UK manufacturer of metal bins
US Federal Law

• CRT Rule: call ahead before you dump!

• Kind of sucks
• GAO says:
• Treat e-waste as hazardous
• Ratify Basel
• Work with Customs and Border
Protection
 States with E-Waste Laws

23 states, 61% of US population now covered!

Source: Electronics Take Back Coalition

Voluntary Efforts

• Moral high ground, economic quicksand

• E-Stewards.org
• EPA Design for the Environment, Plug-In
to eCycling
• Electronic Product Environmental
Assessment Tool (EPEAT)
• Lots more
 What can we do?
• Systemic solutions
• IT industry contributions
• Where we need good ideas
 So how do we fix this?

Simple! Just:
• Ditch planned obsolescence
• Make cradle-to-cradle viable
• Write good regulations and enforce them
• Develop safe in-field processing
• Deploy cutting-edge recycling facilities
“First, get a
million
dollars.”

Simple,
not easy
:-(
 Who's fighting the good fight?

● Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition (SVTC), E-Stewards

● Basel Action Network (BAN), Basel Convention nations
● Electronics TakeBack Coalition
● State governments
● Government Accountability Office (GAO)
● UNEP, UN University
● Design for the environment competitions and programs
● South Africa ewaste facility, Chicago disassembly program
● EU and Asian nations with decent laws and accountability (RoHS)
● E-waste action centers at Universities
 What are they up against?

• It's the economy, stupid.

• US environmental law: CERCLA and
RCRA incompatible with Basel Convention?
• Limitations of replacement substances
• Non-lead solder has its own problems
• Enforcement gaps
• Who has time to chase shipping containers?
 What can tech workers do?

• Demand longer support contracts

• Gartner suggests 5-year for data warehousing
• SANs can take 3 years just to deploy and
decomission
• Demand hardware and packaging take-back
• Team up and negotiate collectively
• Use an audited recycler – E-Stewards.org
 Make Friends, Influence People

• Schmooze your facilities folks

• In PA, nag about electricity deregulation
• Search your employer's website for anything
“green” or “sustainable”, and use that as a
mandate to act
 Make the case for upfront costs

• TCO vs initial purchase estimates can help

• VMWare invites you to use its ROI/TCO
calculator! www.vmware.com/go/calculator
• Blades reduce over-redundancy, promote
snap-in parts, possibly lower power and
cooling
• Most data from vendors, not much peer-
reviewed sysadmin research
Hard to do if your organization balks. But if your
leadership is “going green” or you're the boss...

Promote Green IT!

...like a boss
 Brains needed!

• Safer materials
• Better design – cradle to
cradle, EPR, Design for env,
opposite of planned
obsolescence
• How to convince manufacturers and customers
• Safer in-field processing – harm reduction
• Economic models of how to fund quality recycling
• Better regulations and enforcement
What industries could face
similar issues?

• Solar, especially PV
• Biofuels? Algae-based fuels?
• Nanotech
 Selected Sources

• High Tech Trash – Elizabeth Grossman

• GAO 8/2008, Electronic Waste: EPA Needs to
Better Control Harmful U.S. Exports through
Stronger Enforcement and More Comprehensive
Regulation
• BAN: “Exporting Harm” and “Digital Dump”
• Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition (SVTC)
• Eric Williams, UNEP/UN University program
 Wrap up
• This presentation (next week):
Scribd.com/greenthumbgeek
• Contact: steph.alarcon@gmail.com
• Questions and discussion!