Image via WikipediaApril and August mark the beginnings of the two major dumpster diving seasons here in B-town. Those are the two months when the students clear and leave four years of junk at the curb for big trash pickup. All of this “stuff” eventually would end up in our landfills contaminating our soil and environment if it were not for those of use who dumpster dive and reuse/recycle these items. This year, however, (to my dismay and disappointment) there were an absence computers and electronics being found in the dumpsters and on the curbs of Bloomington. Had the economic hardships caused these students to actually waste less, and hold onto these items? Nope.
The reasons for there being less e-waste present in those items being discarded by students this year was not due to any sense of frugality or financial hardships, but rather it was a direct result of Indiana University offering free e-waste recycling days for the first time this year.
Electronic Waste Collection Days, a free electronic waste recycling drive hosted by IU Bloomington and IUPUI, took place in both Bloomington on April 30-May 2.
The following is an excerpt from the Indiana University Home Pages web site at… http://homepages.indiana.edu/web/page/normal/10536.html
Toxic materials are extremely common in E-waste. Lead, for example, can be found in cathode ray tubes in many televisions and computer monitors. If improperly disposed of, E-waste can cause harm to the environment beyond the negative impact of adding clutter to landfills.
"Millions of pounds of electronic waste from Indiana residents and businesses end up in landfills every year," said Kristin Hanks, an IU sustainable computing graduate assistant. "Unfortunately, most people don't know where to drop off used electronics or even what's recyclable. But I think if you give the public an opportunity to do the right thing, they will."
Sounds good and “green” doesn’t it? Until you read scroll on down the page to read the following statement.
None of the electronics will be processed for resale. Anything that could potentially contain sensitive data, such as cell phones or computers, will be shredded.
Shredded? Well, where the hell do you put the “shredded” materials at? How does “shredding” e-waste translate into recycling? And what happens to all of the toxic materials contained in the e-waste? Surely “shredding” does not make these toxins and less harmful to the environment.
Then I went on to read that “Recycling services are provided by Apple.” I smelled a strong odor in the air, and it was not the dumpsters!
So what does happen to all this “shredded” e-waste after it is donated to Indiana University and their “free e-waste recycling program”? What does Apple do with all those toxins? I did a little research and this is what I found out about Apple’s recycling program.
Apple’s recycling program, which operates in 95 percent of the countries in which it does business, takes back old computers, monitors, printers and other e-waste at no charge.
Many companies ship their e-waste overseas. Apple says it doesn’t. Its policy reads, “No waste from Apple’s U.S. recycling program is shipped outside North America. All recovered materials are processed domestically, with the exception of some commodity materials that can be recycled for future use.”
But some people think that the bit about “commodity materials” gives Apple a loophole. BAN is trying to pressure Apple and other tech companies into explicitly promising not to export hazardous e-waste to developing countries. Specifically, BAN wants these companies to sign its Manufacturer’s Commitment, a straightforward pledge not to export hazardous e-waste to developing nations, either directly or through third-party recyclers.
At press time, of the major tech companies BAN is targeting, only Sony had signed the Commitment; Apple, as well as Dell and others, had not.
Apple counters that it audits its recycling partners closely and that it does not export hazardous tech trash. Environmentalists would like to know who these partners are, but Apple and other manufacturers aren’t saying. “Most companies have not been very straightforward about who’s in their recycling chain, and what they actually do with the material,” says Sheila Davis, the executive director of the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition (SVTC), which has been tracking the electronics industry since 1982.
This lack of transparency makes it difficult to assess Apple’s e-waste operation. “It’s very difficult to track, and you almost have to have internal knowledge of what their operations are,” says BAN’s Puckett. “If we knew which recyclers they use, if they could tell us that, then we could find out where the (e-waste) is going.”
I will give this to the folks over at “Crapple”, despite the fact that the majority of the products that they produce are inherently disposable due in part to the limited battery life and thus they are products that will end up in the waste stream as soon as they are no longer shiny and new, they are the leaders above Microsoft and Dell not only in the area of e-waste recycling but also in developing products which contain less toxins to begin with.
But none of this answers my questions. Where does the “shredded” e-waste go? And how are the toxins disposed of? Could this whole “free e-waste recycling day” thing just be another way for I. U. Bloomington to maintain that P. C. appearance of being small town environmentally conscious and green while helping huge corporations such as Apple ensure that their trendy products NOT get reused. By creating devices with non-replaceable batteries, Apple has a planned obsolescence strategy that essentially requires your iPhone to begin a slow death from the very moment you pull it out of its ultra-designed box. This means that the consumer is forced to purchase a new version of their products as soon as the battery runs out. In order for this strategy to work, big corporations like Apple would need to insure that their products are not being reused, what better way than to offer “free e-waste recycling” where the discarded product gets “shredded” beyond any usefulness rather than being refurbished and reused?
These insidious practices not only deprive financially challenged local citizens from obtaining these everyday benefits of modern technology and communication, but also leaves some big questions concerning the where and how these “shredded” e-waste materials are being recycled and what is being done with the toxins contained in them. A lot of serious questions with no answers being offered by the campus or Apple.
This strikes me as yet another example of how Indiana University has partnered with Big Corporations to stick it to the local people! Bigger apartments, more parking lots and strip malls and to hell with Mom and Pops!
Doesn’t it make more sense to reuse these items, by wiping any personal information from the items and refurbishing them to factory settings? In this way, we can not only keep the items from truly ending up in our landfills, “shredded” or not, and also provide impoverished families and children with technology and tools that they might not otherwise be able to afford or obtain.
If you are a Bloomington resident, or locally owned business that has any old laptops or computers that you are throwing out or no longer in need of and would like to see the items be refurbished and reused here locally and truly kept out of the landfill, rather than being “shredded” and shipped off to some undisclosed location then please consider donating them to the Urban Waste Reclamation Project!
