E-waste and rational resource management

How many of you still have your original cellphone? Not your flip-phone, I’m talking about the brick you had before that. But hey, what did happen to your first flip-phone? Or your first beeper or Blackberry or smartphone? How many of you can truthfully say that you NEVER replace your mobile communication device until it dies and you are forced to upgrade? Let’s see a show of hands.

I don’t see any, either.

And it’s not just our phones (although we’ll more or less focus on them in this post). How about all of the other electronic toys we have: computers and televisions and cameras and just about everything else that we, as voracious consumers, dump way too much money on? And most times it’s not even to replace something that has died — we’re forced into it by mandatory OS upgrades that won’t run on the “obsolete” technology, or — as is equally probable — we simply want the newest and most advanced gadget available.

There are a couple issues with this that I’d like to broach. The first is the obvious need for the raw materials that allow them to be manufactured in the first place. Lithium and cobalt, nickel and neodymium, even gold and silver: all go into making your new iPhone perform its magic.

I already briefly touched on the supply issue in an earlier post (Lithium and Green Energy), and don’t plan to beat on this horse again today (although I promise a more detailed discussion in the future). Suffice it to say that most (if not essentially all) of the critical elements and metals needed for our e-toys are NOT mined, refined, or used in manufacturing here in the good ol’ U. S. of A.

No, the issue I want to dwell on today is what happens to the old technology we don’t use anymore. Call it e-waste, if you will, and it is a growing issue worldwide.

Is e-waste toxic? Oh yeah — the exotic metals can (and will) leach into the groundwater, causing all sorts of problems (click here for an earlier post on groundwater recharge). Is it an eyesore? Again, a resounding answer in the affirmative. None of us really want to look out of our window and see a steaming heap of dead technology.

But… is it valuable? Since the disposed items contain the materials that were needed to build the device in the first place, we get another enthusiastic yes — at least from those with one of three things: a lack of faith that our current suppliers will remain friendly, 20-20 foresight, or an empty belly.

It’s safe to assume that the majority of e-waste produced in the United States is shipped overseas for disposal. But is this wise? The U.S. has already said that we don’t want to develop local sources of the critical metals needed to produce the e-toys, and we also don’t want to build the final products onshore either ‘cuz our workers actually expect a living wage.

Coupled with the understandable environmental restrictions and costs attached to anything we attempt to do domestically, this would likely price these item out of the pocketbooks of all but the wealthiest Americans. And we sure don’t want that, especially in a capitalist economy where even many of those considered poverty-stricken have a cellphone!

Anyway, somewhere betweenn 50% to 70% of e-waste collected in the U.S. is exported to recycling centers in Asia and West Africa. China receives the largest e-recycling volume, followed by India, Nigeria, and Ghana.

And we don’t simply give this stuff away; we actually pay the other countries to take it off our hands (and then bear the collection and shipping costs to get it out of our sight).

These landfills that now litter China, Africa, India, and other areas of the world are chock full of the metals needed to build your next iPhone or Android. It seems to my simple way of looking at things that we may want to revisit the wisdom of this approach, and keep this future resource supply as close as possible.

We still manage to get what we need at a price we can afford (no matter how much many of us claim inflation is destroying our livelihoods), but — if we learned nothing else from Covid — the supply chain is terribly fragile, and any disruption can become yet another point (or two or three) on the inflation index. I can’t help but think that, sooner or later, we are going wish we had control of these raw materials.

The good news for me is that I’m old and almost dead, so the worst of this probably won’t derail my future… but I worry for my kids and grandkids. No doubt, the younger generation has yet another uncomfortable topic to mull, and another serious decision to make!