If you’ve seen our film, The Story of Electronics or read the e-waste section of The Story of Stuff book, you know that we’re pretty concerned about what happens to our electronic gadgets when we throw them out. In the U.S. alone, we produce over 3 million tons of e-waste a year. And other countries are catching up quickly. Where does all this stuff go?
Unfortunately, most e-waste still goes into the trash, which means our laptops, cell phones and game devices end up in landfills and incinerators; usually in Asia or Africa.
We churn through electronic gadgets at an ever accelerating rate, so the overseas export of e-waste is a huge problem. We need to solve our waste problems, not export them.
And guess what? The normally glacial-paced U.S. Congress has taken a step in the right direction! Let’s cheer them on!
Earlier this week – on June 22nd, a bill was introduced in the US House of Representatives called the Responsible Electronics Recycling Act of 2011. This bill will stop sham U.S. “recyclers” from dumping electronic waste on developing countries and will promote much needed recycling jobs in the U.S. where unemployment rates are soaring.
Barbara Kyle, National Coordinator of the Electronics TakeBack Coalition, an excellent coalition which has been working on this issue for years, said “This is the most important step our federal government can take to solve the e-waste problem – to close the door on e-waste dumping on developing countries.”
Help make this bill into law!
If you live in the U.S., call your representative and ask him or her to co-sponsor or support the Responsible Electronics Recycling Act (H.R. 2284). You can look up your Representative’s phone number, or call the Congressional switchboard: 1-202-224-3121. (Recommendation: Enter your Congressperson’s phone number in your phone so you can call easily and often – remember, these people work for us so they need to hear from us – not just from professional lobbyists!)
If you live outside the U.S., please write or call the U.S. Embassy in your country asking the Obama Administration to support the bill for the Responsible Electronics Recycling Act as an important step in stopping waste exports from the U.S. Imagine their surprise to know that people all over the world know about – and support – this new bill!
If you live outside the U.S. and want to stop other waste exports and imports, ask your own government to uphold the Basel Convention including the Basel Ban, an international treaty which bans the export of hazardous wastes from OECD countries to non-OECD ones. You can learn more about the Basel Convention and check if your country has ratified the Convention and the Ban.
Wherever you live, make your electronics last as long as possible. Take care of them. Repair them. Share them. Resist the upgrade. Use an old one proudly! And when you simply must discard some electronic gadget, make sure it is being safely recycled. In the U.S., Canada and the UK, look for recyclers with an e-Steward certification which means they promise not to export e-waste to developing countries. In other countries, urge electronics recyclers to join e-stewards and recycle responsibly. Because it just isn’t right to dump our toxic contaminated stuff on other countries.
©2011 Basel Action Network (BAN)
