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The production of electrical and electronic equipment is one of the fastest growing global manufacturing activities. This development has resulted in an increase of waste in electric and electronic equipment causing a dilemma on how to dispose them. DR KIZITO LUBANO reveals how poor disposal of Electronic waste impacts on your health.
With the unrelenting pace of technology changing every moment, it is not strange to see electric and electronic products become outdated in the blink of an eye, consigned to the rubbish pit of history.
This rapid growth, coupled with urbanisation and growing demand for consumer goods, has increased both the consumption of electrical and electronic equipment (EEE) and the production of waste in electric and electronic equipment (WEEE), which can be a source of hazardous wastes that poses a risk to the environment and to sustainable economic growth.
Escalation of e-waste
To address potential environmental problems that could stem from improper management of WEEE, many countries and organisations have drafted national legislation to improve the reuse, recycling and other forms of material recovery from WEEE, to reduce the amount and types of materials disposed in landfills.
Kenya is yet to reach there despite having one of the fastest growing electrical and electronic equipment consumers.
According to National Environment Management Authority (Nema) report: Guidelines for Electronic Waste Management in Kenya, while the use of electronics has greatly improved efficiency and quality of life for Kenyans, the appliances generate a new and emerging waste that is causing environmental degradation, due to limited capacity on its handling and disposal.
The escalation is blamed on increased access to low quality electronic goods, and subsequent high rates of obsolescence. The situation is also intensified by obsolete donations especially from developing countries, which add to the high generation of e-waste.
As such, the country is facing the challenge of accumulated e-waste whose handling and disposal has not been substantively addressed by the present environmental laws.
An estimated 50 million tonnes of e-waste is produced globally each year with Kenya generating an average of 3,000 tonnes e-waste from computers, monitors, printers, mobile phones, fridges and batteries among others. Lack of segregation and poor disposal systems has led to mixing of e-waste with ordinary waste in our dumpsites.
While recycling of waste electric and electronic equipment is important not only to reduce the amount of waste requiring treatment, but also to promote the recovery of valuable materials, Kenya still uses crude methods of recycling and disposal.
Characterisation of these wastes is of paramount importance for developing a cost-effective and environmentally sound recycling system.
Risk factors
A personal computer (PC) may contain up to four grammes of gold and other valuable materials that can be recovered at a profit, particularly if the work is done in low-income countries. However, as is the case with almost all present-day electronic products, a PC also contains toxic substances such as lead, mercury, arsenic, cadmium, selenium, and hexavalent chromium.
Given the trend towards pervasive computing, which means that more and more everyday commodities will contain microprocessors in the future, the borderlines between “classic” electrical equipment (such as refrigerators) and electronic equipment will become blurred.
Today, more than 98 per cent of all programmable microprocessors are embedded in commodities that are usually not perceived as computers. Even more relevant from an environmental point of view, many commodities that until recently were considered “nonelectric” are now being equipped with microprocessors for extended functionality, or with radiofrequency identification (RFID) transponders for contactless identification
Given these trends in ICT diffusion and application, it is likely that the dissipation of valuable and toxic materials due to the distribution and disposal of electronics will continue, unless effective countermeasures are taken.
Consequences
The ecological, economic and social consequences resulting from poor handling and management of e-waste include air pollution, especially when e-waste is burnt since most of then are non-biodegradable equipment.
The toxicity and radioactive nature of e-waste is dangerous to the humans since they are found in water, soil and animal products. Furthermore, they block the water runoff channels, thus increasing the amount of waste.
In economic terms; substantial public spending on health care goes up when the hard chemicals affect people’s health, through lead poisoning and cancerous mercury.
Ozone depletion has also been cited as a result of poor disposal of e-waste, and can lead to unpredictable weather conditions through prolonged droughts and floods.
Measures
The hope that the continued miniaturisation of electronics, according to the so-called Moore’s Law and related technological trends will solve the problem in the long run is neither supported by experience nor by the expectations explicitly stated by ICT manufacturers.
Kenya today relies on second-hand products that include second-hand cars, mobile phones and fridges among other gadgets, which are freely traded in the market. These refurbished products are known to cause electrical waste due to their short lifespan.
Among measures that can be taken by those who find their appliances obsolete are delivering the waste to selling companies for either recycling, or to find a way of disposing them correctly.
Managing flows
IBM, for example, expects that in the next five to ten years, about one billion people will be using more than a trillion networked objects across the world. This would mean that there would be an average of 1,000 ‘smart objects’ per person in the richer part of the world, each containing a processor and some communication module.
Assuming that the average mass of an electronic component used to make an object ‘smart’ is about ten grammes and that such a component would be in service for about one year, the resulting per-capita flow of e-waste amounts to ten kilogramme per ampere. This value is on the same order of magnitude as today’s e-waste in industrialised countries.
One can conclude that implementing the ‘smart objects’ vision would not render the mass flows of electronic waste negligible. However, it will certainly change the quality and manageability of these flows.
Taking other technological visions literally can also even lead to dramatic results. One example is the vision of ‘e-grains’, where very small processors, envisioned to be used as ‘intelligent wall paint’ are turning walls into large-scale displays and rooms into distributed computers.
Irrespective of the many details that may be debatable, the considerations set out above suggest that the life cycle of electronics has to be improved significantly if we are to avoid an accelerated loss of scarce raw materials and emission of toxics into the environment.
When e-waste is disposed off, recycled, or put into a landfill with domestic waste without any controls, there are predictable negative consequences for the environment and for human health.
A survey by Eco-Ethics – Kenya indicates that the methods used in the extraction and disposal of the metals are crude and pose a great risk to human health and the environment. Some chemicals found in the e-waste are known to be persistent and accumulate in fatty tissues of living organisms when ingested.
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