Articles

The E-Waste Scandal: India's Tech Trash Heap

03/11/2006 Internet Culture

The e-waste scandal. For most people concerns about the safe disposal of computer equipment end at the local dump. Scott Carney reveals the true cost of cutting-edge technology as he examines the shady business of e-waste export.

A dark concoction of grease, dirt and sweat on Mohan’s screwdriver made it difficult to grip the handle as he pried the copper coil loose from an old computer motor. Finally, with a grunt and a twist of his wrist, the wire broke and he unwound his bounty like silk from a spool of thread. In the age of globalisation where everything takes on a glossy sheen, Mohan is one man in a legion of morticians who attend to the last days of obsolete computer systems, appliances and gadgets. He turns them into gold.

“You know where he comes from?” his co-worker asks me while he gums a burnt cigar. “That bastard’s family used to climb trees for a living. He’s lucky to find a job working here with us.” Despite doing the same basic job, the scrap workers in this Chennai slum still make it a point to reinforce centuries-old caste hierarchies.

E-waste is a politely coined term that encompasses a wide variety of non-functional techn trash. It’s a growing problem in Asia. From the date of purchase, just about every electronic product sold on the planet begins a steady progression towards obsolescence. No matter how slick a device it was on the shelf of your local computer store, it will eventually become just one more piece in a mountain of useless keyboards, computers, mobile phones, game systems, televisions and countless other items.

Creating techno-trash

According to a 2002 study by Radha Gopalan of the Nautilus Institute, computers depreciate at the rate of two per cent a week, making them more or less worthless in under a year. It’s almost a cliché in the computer-savvy world to complain that a brand new system has already been surpassed by something even more sleek and high-tech before you get it home from the shop. The quest to be at the top of the technology curve means a lot of old machines find themselves in landfills or in the hands of international scrap dealers.

What is so bad about the old Compaq sitting in your closet? Besides taking up space, computers are repositories for a whole host of nasty chemicals, from highly concentrated heavy metals to the toxins that have a tendency to leak from capacitors over time. Recycling e-waste in developed countries with high environmental standards can be an expensive proposition, and many companies have found out that simply shipping it to the third world can be up to ten times cheaper.

The result is a burgeoning recycling industry in India, China and parts of Africa that will willingly snap up old systems to extract some of the working parts and the gold, platinum, copper and other precious metals that are embedded in the circuitry.

One man’s rubbish

Under the Basel Convention it is illegal to export hazardous waste, which must instead be dealt with in its country of origin. Most e-waste falls under that category, but exporters have found enough loopholes in the convention to keep scrap workers occupied for the rest of their lives. According to a report from Toxics Link (a Chennai-based NGO), European companies are currently shipping thousands of tons of non-working equipment to Chennai every year. Labelled as used computers for resale or scrap metal, computers can slip under the radar, and overburdened port officials are unable to catch all the shipments.

Even when officials do catch smuggled junk, they don’t return the waste to the country of origin, but levy a small fine on the importer and then auction it off to the highest bidder. Inevitably the same Company that imported the e-waste in the first place can repurchase it legally from the government.

“Most companies in Europe and the United States want to project a clean image, so they don’t export directly. They sell it through intermediaries who ship it first to Singapore or the Middle East as one thing, then re-bill the shipment and send it to India. It’s nothing but smuggling,” says K S Sudhakar, Program Officer at Toxics Link.

Once unloaded in the country, the waste starts to spread out over the city to small fl y-by-night stands and large contractors that deal with it in bulk.

“Sometimes containers arrive from abroad marked for reuse, but when the container gets opened it is full of broken machinery that can only be sold as scrap,” says Surendhara Mehtaa, director of the recycling Company Trishyiraya. Mehtaa’s operation claims to be the only environmentally friendly e-recycling Company in Chennai, although it doesn’t directly buy imported e-waste – sometimes the junk his sources sell to the Company has followed a circuitous route from international sources.

Baduruddin’s worked in scrap for 20 years, harvesting metal from burned boards

Piles of useless circuits boards are broken into pieces by hand and the processors sent to a Belgium Company to extract goldAnother man’s gold

When I arrive on the site, workers wearing helmets and gloves were breaking circuit boards into bite-sized pieces. “Once we process the scrap into small pieces, we export it to a Company in Belgium who extracts the gold and silver with safe chemical processes,” explains Mehtaa. With a snap of his fingers, a worker emerges from a back room with a bag full of what looked like gold ingots, but are actually processed computer processors. “They’re the most valuable part of the computer. Sometimes with up to an ounce of gold in them,” he says.

“He knew you were coming,” says Sudhakar who thinks that Trisyiraya might be involved in some of the darker sides of waste disposal. “Why else would workers wear heavy work gloves to unscrew harddrive components? They have a dump on the other side of town that they don’t let anyone see.”

While companies like Trishyiraya manage a large proportion of the e-waste around the city, there are smaller outfits, like the one where the scrap worker Mohan works, which do many of the more dangerous procedures locally.

In a market behind the train station, there are at least three shops where workers specialise in processing waste with hammers, acid and fire. New Moore Market bears a family resemblance to the sort of outpost you might find on Tatooine in Star Wars. It’s the grand bazaar of junk markets with everything from rusted tools and discarded clothing to industrial water pumps, Nintendo controllers and obsolete computer parts. It’s not just a dump for e-waste, but a surprisingly ordered market for every sort of used brica- brac known to man. The market personifies India’s philosophy towards trash: what is one man’s junk is another man’s gold. If it can be repaired, reused or melted into something else, anything that enters the market has a price.

Precious metals

In the past, the back half of the market was a major processing ground for imported and domestic computer scrap. For better or worse, after a series of reports from the local and international media many of the processing sites have moved underground. The few remaining shops are cagey about the details of their operations and are constantly on the watch for government agents aiming to shut them down. Although they declined to comment, shop owners there say that when the government wants to make a show of tackling the e-waste issue they shut down a shop here and leave the rest of the industry to go about business as usual.

On the other side of town in a slum by the river, Baduruddin, a worker in one of those underground operations sifts through burned computer boards to harvest metal from the ashes: “In India we don’t waste anything. I’ve been working in scrap for 20 years. I’m here to stay,” he says.