Some Negative Environmental Aspects of IT Waste: Trade in E-Waste

1
Some Negative Environmental Aspects of IT Waste
Trade in E-Waste

• by Thomas Ruddy
• EMPA Swiss Federal Labs for Materials Testing and
  Research, St.Gall, Sustainable Info. Tech. Unit
• http//www.empa.ch/sit

Disclaimer opinions are those of the author, not
nesessarily those of his employer.
2
Overview

• Benefits of trade in used IT equipment
• Risks of trade in used IT equipment, 1 of 3
• America, the free rider
• Attempts at regulatory control on different
  levels

3
Personal introduction

• Organizer of a workshop at the International
  Symposium Informatics for Environmental
  Protection IEP 01, Zurich, and chronologist of
  the global digital divide, contributor to the LSE
  Global Yearbook of Civil Society,
  http//www.hsw.fhso.ch/ruddy/Workshop_2.htm
• IEP 04 will take place in Geneva.
• Hence the claim as to whether there are potential
  benefits to help bridge the digital divide is
  undisputed. Let us now look at some of the risks

4
Multilateral Environmental Agreement (MEA) the
Basel Convention

• Convenor and Webmaster of The Environment and
  ICT Content Group at WSIS, http//www.wsis.et
  hz.ch
• One of our tenets is derived from the United
  Nations Multilateral Environmental Agreement
  (MEA) the Basel Convention on Toxic Waste
• Recently attended its 6th Conference of the
  Parties (COP)
• Let me share with you 2 experiences from that
  COP....

5
Unwanted Gifts

• Uganda minister complained about e-waste
• A friend of mine had been distributing used
  computers through his NGO Uganda Connect.
• I put them in touch with one another to sort out
• the useful gifts from
• the computers soon to become end-of-useful-life
  scrap.
• A general suggestion proposed there need for a
  certification agency to distinguish 1. (above)
  from 2.

6
Who invites whom?

• WTO invited us to its side-event.
• It reported on inviting the MEA Basel Convention
  to discuss compatibility with trade regime.
• Jim Puckett of http//www.ban.org asked why
  shouldnt the invitation have been vice versa?
  Why shouldnt it be the MEA that invites the WTO
  regime to discuss compatibility?
• WTOs dispute settlement mechanism is binding for
  144 member countries.

7
Regime incompatibilities

• Trade regime based on principles of
  nondiscrimination
• MEA regime - based on rights to discriminate
  goods by
• the Production and Process Methods (PPM) used,
  e.g. tuna/dolphin case, and
• safeguards, e.g. for health reasons
• Precautionary principle which party bears duty
  to proof? case of solder containing lead in
  motherboards

8
Compatibility due to improve

• At the Fourth Ministerial Conference in Doha,
  Qatar, in November 2001, Ministers agreed to
  start negotiations on specific issues relating to
  the trade and environment linkage,
  http//www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/envir_e/envir_
  e.htm

9
America, the free rider

• Noncompliance with the Basel Convention by the
  free rider USA
• 80 of US recycled computers land in Asia
  according to the NGO Basel Action Network in
  San Francisco, http//www.ban.org
• However the recycling there is not
  environmentally friendly, but rather a source of
  pollution for the populace.

10
Levels of attempts to regulate exports

• Just as the Basel Convention is a multilateral
  attempt regulating export from the OECD
  countries.
• the Waste from Electrical and Electronic
  Equipment (WEEE) Directive of the European Union
  is a regional, or plurilateral attempt
• And Switzerland has an exemplary national
  attempt, SWICO. It levies a recycling fee at
  purchase.