E-Waste and Sustainability

A few years ago, I hosted a dinner for some friends at home, in Nairobi. As we tried to sort out the music situation, one of them noticed the seriously old VCR sitting neatly among all the other slightly newer equipment under the TV. He burst out into incredulous laughter- he couldn't remember the last time he'd seen a VCR. To be honest, I'd never even thought of tossing it, even though it's completely out of use.
A couple of years after that, at grad school in Boston, we got a number of emails from seemingly helpful fellow students, looking to "donate" their 3- or 4 -year old laptops to "kids in Africa....If you're going to be anywhere on the continent, please let me know. It's in really good condition, but I just need to move onto something newer and lighter." There is nothing wrong with donating a used laptop to helpless kids on a "poor" continent...or is there?

These memories have got me thinking quite seriously about how we dispose of all our old equipment and gadgetry- especially as a larger percentage of the population move into US-like levels of consumption of new generation phones, and the broader population is subjected to increasingly cheap, short-life products.

The problem with e-waste is mainly the danger to human health and the environment, with a number of compounds found in e-waste found to contain cancer causing elements. (Thanks to ewaste guide for this comprehensive list). This problem is further compounded when this waste finds its way to the developing world, with most   (if not all countries) lacking the capacity to deal with it. It thus becomes a threat to human health and the environment, very much like outright dumping of toxic waste in the developing world. (See Trafigura Incident here.)

In mid September 2014, in Geneva Switzerland, the ninth meeting of the Open-ended Working Group on the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal will convene. The overarching objective of the Basel Convention is to protect human health and the environment against the adverse effects of hazardous wastes. Coming into force in 1992, it has been slow to agree basic definitions on hazardous waste, and, as with all multilateral environmental agreements, has no power of enforcement. Hence the toxic waste dumped by the multinational firm, Trafigura, that caused the deaths of many in the Ivory Coast, as well as long term health problems, has never been physically cleared from the country. Neither have those who suffered terribly been properly addressed and compensated.

Among the issues to be discussed is international guidelines on e-waste. These have been contentious for a number of reasons, chief among them is that new and emerging economies, backed by some industry players, would like electronic products that have not yet come to the end of their lives to be deemed "non-waste"and thus be fit for export, with the exporting countries having no responsibility to the importing countries-- not even a notification that these products have a very limited shelf-life and that they will soon be waste products. It remains to be seen whether these guidelines will be adopted.

But on the local front, the issue of e-waste is already being discussed and implemented. In 2011, Safaricom partnered with the National Environmental Management Authority (NEMA) to launch a recycling  scheme in a bid to extend the life of its products. Several recycling spots were introduced all over the country, and the scheme has been pretty effective in collecting and refurbishing those phones that still had some life in them. In 2013, this partnership expanded, with the Communications Commission of Kenya working together to raise awareness on the dangers of poor disposal of e-waste (see press article here).

However, what happens to those products that are irreparable? Many times, these products end up in dumps, where young people scavenge for them and then melt them to try and regain the copper the products sometimes contain. The act of burning them releases toxic compounds that have been proven carcinogens, or are just outright poisonous like arsenic.  But even before the burning process, these "dead products" leak live deadly chemicals into the soil, compromising our food and water quality, and thus directly affecting our health and ability to reproduce healthy children.

In East Africa, Kenya leads in technology consumption,as seen in this chart.
 Looking at the slightly dated figures, Kenya (and, indeed the region) is not yet at dangerous levels. 



 But we don't need to get to these levels in order to do something.
"Something" could include:

• Conscious individuals NOT throwing away our old phones, DVD players, VCRs, and TVs until we know exactly where they go;
• Calling on the government to push for Basel Convention Regional Center for East Africa to be based in Kenya to encourage proper training on hazardous waste disposal, as well as the requisite tech transfer;
• Engaging the tech multinationals setting up shop on our soil to re-export end-of-life goods to the developed world, where there is the capacity to deal with these products sustainably;
• Encouraging other companies to establish recycling points for their products, if these products are still recyclable- like Safaricom has done.

Other suggestions are very welcome... so that we don't end up like this.