Page 644 - Environment: The Science Behind the Stories

Products at end of life (millions of tons) 2.5 Mobile devices taken apart, and parts and materials are refurbished and reused in
new products. There are serious concerns, however, about health
risks that recycling may pose to workers doing the disassembly.
Televisions
2.0
Wealthy nations ship much of their e-waste to developing coun-
Computers and
tries, where low-income workers disassemble the devices and
accessories
handle toxic materials with minimal safety regulations.
1.5
Another challenge is that the recent conversion of televi-
sion and computer monitor technology from cathode ray tubes
1.0
to LCD and plasma screens has meant that there is no longer
much demand for recycled cathode ray tubes. As a result, old
0.5
warehouses and are at risk of never being recycled.
Besides keeping toxic substances out of our waste stream,
0 cathode ray tubes (rich in toxic lead) are piling up in recyclers’
e-waste recycling helps us recover trace metals used in electron-
1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 ics that are rare and lucrative. A typical cell phone contains up to
Year $2.50 worth of precious metals (p. 667). By one estimate, 1 ton
(a) Products at end of life each year of computer scrap contains more gold than 16 tons of mined ore
from a gold mine. Every ounce of metal we can recycle from a
manufactured item is an ounce of metal we don’t need to mine
2.0
from the ground. Thus, “mining” e-waste for metals helps reduce
the environmental impacts of mining the earth.
In one of the more intriguing efforts to promote sustain-
E-waste
E-waste (millions of tons) 1.0 E-waste Games in Vancouver produced its stylish gold, silver, and
1.5
ability through such recycling, the 2010 Winter Olympic
disposed of
bronze medals (FIGURE 22.18) from metals recovered from
recycled and processed e-waste!
recycled
WEIGHING THE ISSUES
0.5
TOXIC ELECTRONICS? The cathode ray tubes in older televi-
sions and desktop monitors held up to 5 kg (8 lb) of heavy
0 metals, such as lead and cadmium. These represent the
2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 second-largest source of lead in U.S. landfills today, behind
Year auto batteries. The new flat-panel LCD and plasma screen
(b) E-waste disposed of and recycled each year technologies that are replacing them alleviate these risks,
but they contain mercury, are made using the potent green-
FIGURE 22.17 Electronic waste is increasing, but so is its
recycling. The amount of electronic products at the end of their house gas nitrogen trifluoride, and are (so far) less recyclable.
lives each year (a) in the United States has skyrocketed. The Smartphones and other handheld devices require fewer mate-
amounts disposed of and recycled each year (b) are both grow- rials, yet more devices are being purchased worldwide all the
ing. Data from U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2011. Electronic waste time. Considering the rapid turnover of these products, what
management in the United States through 2009. EPA, Washington, D.C. future waste problems and environmental health issues might
you expect? What steps do you think we should take to best
handle the reuse, recycling, and disposal of these products?

1980, and U.S. households discard more than 300 million
per year—two-thirds of them still in working order. Fortu-
nately, e-waste recycling is expanding along with e-waste
disposal, and Americans now recycle one-fourth of their
e-waste, by weight (FIGURE 22.17b).
Of the electronic items we discard, most end up in conven- CHAPTER 22 • MAN A GING OUR WASTE
tional sanitary landfills and incinerators. However, electronic
products contain heavy metals and toxic flame-retardants, and
research suggests that e-waste should instead be treated as haz-
ardous waste (see THE SCIENCE BEHIND THE STORY, pp. 646–647).
The EPA and a number of states are now taking steps to keep
e-waste out of conventional sanitary landfills and incinerators
and instead treat it as hazardous waste.
Increasingly, used electronics are collected by businesses, FIGURE 22.18 The medals awarded to athletes at the 2010
nonprofit organizations, or municipal services and are processed Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver were manufactured
for reuse or recycling. When e-waste is recycled, the devices are partly from precious metals recycled from discarded e-waste. 643

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