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How do you make electronics easier to recycle?
A UN-led group is grappling with the growing crisis of high-tech trash.
from the March 8, 2007 edition
Page 2 of 4
Consumer electronics contain many potentially toxic substances, from lead and mercury to flame retardants and PCBs. The EPA estimates that e-waste accounts for only 1 to 4 percent of municipal waste. But according to the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, it's responsible for 70 percent of the heavy metals in landfills, including 40 percent of all lead. (Cathode-ray tubes found in old televisions and computer monitors contain four to eight pounds of lead.)
E-waste also contains precious metals that have dramatically increased in value recently. The price of indium, a rare metal element used in liquid crystal displays (LCDs), has increased sixfold in the past five years. (Natural-resource-poor Japan gets half of its indium supply by recycling imported e-scrap.) The price of ruthenium, used in hard drives, has increased sevenfold. In 2006, the average price of circuit board e-scrap was 46 percent higher than in 2005.
"If we look to some of the contents in electronic goods, the scarcity is very alarming," says StEP's Mr. Kuehr.
But many doubt whether the scarcity of materials alone will be enough to drive the recycling and mining of e-scrap.
"The more precious materials you have in a product, the more likely you're going to have a research project to try to get the precious materials out of the product," says Timothy Gutowski, a professor of mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "Products are moving away from recycling as fast as they can."
And in an era concerned about humanity's hand in climate change, some see energy expenditure as the overarching issue. The average desktop computer and monitor require at least 10 times their mass in fuel to manufacture, compared with automobiles or refrigerators, which need only one to two times their weight. (Microchip production is the most energy-intensive industry ever, according to one study.) The smelting of bauxite ore to make aluminum requires 20 times more energy than melting down and reusing aluminum scrap.
"It's really a shame to throw away all that energy we've put into it," says Jeremy Gregory, a research scientist at MIT's Materials Systems Lab.
From a recycler's point of view, profit depends on keeping labor costs low. Ideally, the process would be entirely automated: Products would enter a shredder that would automatically separate the various materials – metals, plastic, glass. But many electronics contain toxic materials – batteries and LCDs, for example – that must first be removed, often by hand.
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