What is being done about E-waste?

Today, we are surrounded by electronic equipment. It is an essential tool for our day to day living.

Currently, the average lifespan of a computer is two to four years. So what happens when our computer breaks or our cell phone contract expires? For most of us, it is quite simple. Once we find the funds, we replace them.

The Massachusetts department of environmental protection states that electronic waste (e-waste) is now the fastest growing category of waste in Massachusetts.

E-waste is growing two to three times faster than any other waste stream in the US according to the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

UMass student Josh Stoffel, environmental studies major and the founder and president of the Students for Environmental Awareness and Action is worried about the growing trend of e-waste.

“The home computer has because commonplace and individual laptops in a household are also becoming a trend,” he said. “What this all means is that the amount of e-waste coming from the US has only skyrocketed in the past 15 years.”

When electronic waste is put in landfills, the toxic substances are released onto the air, soil, and water.

Lead poisoning has been linked with learning disabilities, behavioral problems and, at very high levels, seizures, coma, and death.

Recycling on the average creates 1000 times more jobs per ton than mining or disposal even death so the importance of recycling e-waste is clearly evident.

Lorenzo Macaluso, the Special Projects coordinator at the UMass office of waste management explains the current laws in place in Massachusetts.

“There are laws in place called ‘waste bans’ that prohibit most e-waste from being disposed of in the trash,” Macaluso explained.

“On May first of this year, there was a ban put in place for any electronic device that has back lighting (flat screens and monitors, cell phones etc) because the lamp used to backlight contains mercury,” she said.

This is a big step forward considering the EPA’s statistic that fewer than 20 percent of cell phones are recycled each year.
The EPA explains the difference recycling cell phones could make to the envrionment.

“If all of the 100 million cell phones ready for end of life management in the U.S. are recycled, we could save enough energy to power more than 194,000 U.S. households with electricity for one year.”

Macaluso explained the e-waste program in place at UMass.

“Unwanted computers from academic and administrative areas are first removed from the university property management system and brought to the recycling facility at Tillson farm.”

Macaluso understands the importance of keeping the carbon footprint of UMass to a minimum
“We take great care to make sure our recycling vendors are not shipping materials overseas and therefore causing envrionmental damage to other countries,” Macaluso said. “In FY07, the UMass campus recycled about 90 tons of electronics from campus.”

On a wider scale, Stoffel thinks it is important for society to pressure big companies to take back their old electronic products for recycling.

“If a company produces a product and sells it to Joe Average, then that company must take back the product when Mr. Average is done with it and safely dispose of it,” Stoffel explains. “If such a program was mandatory and fines were in place for anyone who did not comply, the amount of e-waste would be greatly reduced.”

Students who wish to recycle are allowed to bring one full computer set up or one TV per year for free. The computer set up includes a printer, a key-board, a CPU, a monitor and other accessories. The facility is open Monday to Friday, 7am-2pm.