What did you do with that old TV or com­put­er that fi­nal­ly died? Is it still sit­ting in a cor­ner of the house, wait­ing for the day you fig­ure out what to do with it? Or did you just throw it in the trash and hope that the garbage col­lec­tor didn't no­tice? Do you even know how to dis­pose of it prop­er­ly? And would you make the ef­fort to take it to a cer­ti­fied e-waste re­cy­cler? You should. Elec­tron­ic waste, known as e-waste, is list­ed as the most haz­ardous type on the plan­et. High-tech elec­tron­ics con­tain dozens of ma­te­ri­als that can be harm­ful to the en­vi­ron­ment and hu­man health. While the equip­ment is in­tact, they are harm­less. How­ev­er, if phys­i­cal­ly dam­aged, dis­man­tled or im­prop­er­ly dis­posed, the tox­ins can leak in­to the soil, ground­wa­ter and air. Even cell­phones con­tain tox­ins that can leach in­to the soil and poi­son it. E-waste has be­come an is­sue of se­ri­ous con­cern to en­vi­ron­men­tal­ists glob­al­ly, as a grow­ing num­ber of elec­tron­ic items are dis­card­ed in land­fills every year. The prob­lem is fur­ther com­pound­ed by the fact that many of the el­e­ments used to make con­sumer elec­tron­ics are quite valu­able, lead­ing com­pa­nies to at­tempt to re­cov­er them from aban­doned elec­tron­ics, and dis­card un­want­ed parts in a man­ner which is un­safe. In the 21st cen­tu­ry elec­tron­ic waste is the fastest grow­ing waste in the world, be­cause of the con­stant up­grades in tech­nol­o­gy. Com­put­ers alone ac­count for 50 mil­lion tons of waste an­nu­al­ly.

Leg­is­la­tion need­ed

Bri­an Al­lum is the man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Pi­ran­ha In­ter­na­tion­al Ltd, a waste man­age­ment com­pa­ny that deals with elec­tron­ic waste, re­cy­cling (of plas­tics) and soft­ware de­vel­op­ment. He says en­sur­ing that e-waste is prop­er­ly dis­posed of is a col­lab­o­ra­tive ef­fort that be­gins with the con­sumer. Speak­ing from Pi­ran­ha's of­fice in Cou­va, Al­lum said com­pa­nies should not al­low waste-man­age­ment com­pa­nies to col­lect their elec­tron­ic waste with­out en­sur­ing that the com­pa­ny is le­git­i­mate, and has been prop­er­ly cer­ti­fied to col­lect and dis­pose of haz­ardous waste. He said be­cause there are no poli­cies or reg­u­la­tion on the col­lec­tion and dis­pos­al of e-waste in T&T, any­one can print a cer­tifi­cate of dis­pos­al. "This hap­pens a lot and the items col­lect­ed end up on a back road some­where, or the land­fill," says Al­lum. In ad­di­tion to the need for leg­is­la­tion to deal with this type of dump­ing, con­sumers al­so need to do their home­work and take in­di­vid­ual re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. "Don't just hand over your elec­tron­ics to a com­pa­ny that claims it dis­pos­es of e-waste," Al­lum warned. "En­sure that this com­pa­ny is cer­ti­fied by vis­it­ing the fa­cil­i­ty to get first­hand knowl­edge of what is hap­pen­ing. Ask to see doc­u­ments sup­port­ing its claim as a cer­ti­fied com­pa­ny. You re­serve this right. "In ad­di­tion, you can vis­it the EMA to ver­i­fy the com­pa­ny's cer­ti­fi­ca­tion." So what cre­den­tials does Pi­ran­ha have to man­age e-waste? To be­gin with, a cer­tifi­cate of en­vi­ron­men­tal clear­ance (CEC) from the EMA, says Al­lum. The com­pa­ny is al­so reg­is­tered and is com­pli­ant with the E-Stew­ard Stan­dard, which was de­vel­oped by the Basel Ac­tion Net­work, an in­ter­na­tion­al NGO work­ing to pre­vent the glob­al­i­sa­tion of the tox­ic chem­i­cal cri­sis. This stan­dard speaks to all the en­vi­ron­men­tal laws in North Amer­i­ca and Eu­rope, and man­dates that haz­ardous waste trans­port­ed or moved to an­oth­er coun­try is done with a per­mit sys­tem. Be­sides the need for in­ter­est by the pri­vate and pub­lic sec­tors, Al­lum says the Gov­ern­ment re­al­ly needs to step up on leg­is­la­tion. "Leg­is­la­tion on prop­er waste dis­pos­al must be im­ple­ment­ed and en­forced," he says. "There must be some form of prod­uct stew­ard­ship, with man­u­fac­tur­ers and all in the dis­tri­b­u­tion chan­nel hav­ing the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of man­ag­ing prop­er dis­pos­al of elec­tron­ics."

Prop­er dis­pos­al

When e-waste reach­es a waste-man­age­ment fa­cil­i­ty it should first be di­vid­ed in­to two cat­e­gories-max­i­mum and re­cy­cle (in­ves­ti­ga­tion to see if it can be reused) and de­struc­tion and re­cy­cle (im­me­di­ate­ly de­stroyed). What­ev­er is kept should be care­ful­ly doc­u­ment­ed, in­clud­ing the mod­el, se­r­i­al num­ber and weight of the com­put­er, as well as a gen­er­al and in­ter­nal num­ber so it can be tracked. Al­lum said some of the equip­ment re­ceived in work­ing con­di­tion can cer­tain­ly be re­fur­bished and do­nat­ed. Pi­ran­ha is a Mi­crosoft Reg­is­tered Re­fur­bish­er which means the com­pa­ny can then in­stall li­censed op­er­at­ing soft­ware on­to the re­cy­cled unit. They al­so con­vert plas­tics in­to sound-proof­ing for rooms and mu­sic stu­dios; while steel and met­al, and glass from CRT mon­i­tors are al­so reused. There is a cost to re­cy­cle e-waste though, de­pend­ing on the bulk or con­di­tion of the elec­tron­ics. Al­lum said since there are no sub­si­dies from the Gov­ern­ment to re­cy­cle e-waste, eth­i­cal dis­pos­al in­volves pay­ing for the use of li­censed fa­cil­i­ties to process the waste ma­te­ri­als that Pi­ran­ha can't. "This is a vol­ume-dri­ven in­dus­try and we are yet to re­ceive con­sis­tent, large num­bers of elec­tron­ic items that would jus­ti­fy us pur­chas­ing the equip­ment to break down the items at this time," he ex­plained. "Items are bro­ken down as much as pos­si­ble and then shipped abroad to spe­cial­ist fa­cil­i­ties where the re­cov­ery process­es take place." Pi­ran­ha on­ly works with cer­ti­fied e-Stew­ard re­cy­clers, au­dit­ed by third-par­ty au­di­tors. This is to pre­vent the e-waste be­ing shipped to de­vel­op­ing coun­tries to be dumped, and chil­dren or prison labour be­ing used in the dis­pos­al process. T&T is a sig­na­to­ry to, and has rat­i­fied the Basel Con­ven­tion. This means all ship­ments of haz­ardous waste must be ac­com­pa­nied by a Basel Per­mit is­sued by the EMA. In 2011 Pi­ran­ha processed about 600,000 pounds of e-waste, equiv­a­lent to 250-300 tons processed an­nu­al­ly.

Pol­i­cy com­ing says Chan­dresh Shar­ma

Min­is­ter of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Chan­dresh Shar­ma said e-waste has be­come a glob­al chal­lenge. He said in the past it was just dumped in the wa­ter­ways and land­fill as there was no pol­i­cy and knowl­edge on prop­er dis­pos­al was lim­it­ed. He says ed­u­ca­tion has changed this in some parts of the world. He re­called an in­ci­dent years ago where lead-con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed waste was found in La Chance Trace, Ari­ma, and in Waller­field at De­mer­ara Road. High con­cen­tra­tions of lead were found in the soil and wa­ter, poi­son­ing more than 400 res­i­dents, among them 180 chil­dren. "The gov­ern­ment has tak­en a very strict ap­proach on the dis­pos­al of e-waste," says Shar­ma. "Any pri­vate or­gan­i­sa­tion dis­pos­ing of this type of waste must be cer­ti­fied." Shar­ma said to en­force this, a pol­i­cy has been draft­ed on waste man­age­ment due to be brought be­fore Cab­i­net. The pol­i­cy will look at the var­i­ous cat­e­gories of waste and man­age­ment of dis­pos­al, re­cy­cling (in­cen­tives to en­cour­age re­cy­cling), guide­lines for waste man­age­ment com­pa­nies and penal­ties and fines for im­prop­er dis­pos­al of haz­ardous waste. He said the Min­istry is mov­ing to im­ple­ment home re­cy­cling bins in all homes to re­duce the amount of waste that reach­es the land­fill. Ed­u­ca­tion pro­grammes on gen­er­al waste dis­pos­al and man­age­ment are al­so on the Min­is­ter's agen­da to bring about pub­lic aware­ness. "It has not been our cul­ture to re­al­ly care sin­cere­ly about what hap­pens to the waste that leaves our homes or when we dis­pose of them im­prop­er­ly, "says Shar­ma. "Get­ting the pub­lic to be­come more en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly con­scious will not hap­pen overnight." He said hope­ful­ly hav­ing the pol­i­cy will be­gin to change things.

EMA on e-waste

The T&T Guardian spoke with EMA's cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions of­fi­cer Nicole Bachan on its role in en­sur­ing e-waste is prop­er­ly dis­posed. Bachan said, as it per­tains to the Des­ig­nat­ed Ac­tiv­i­ties, if the e-waste is be­ing re­cy­cled or ma­te­ri­als are re­cov­ered from its con­stituent parts, then this would fall un­der the Cer­tifi­cate of En­vi­ron­men­tal Clear­ance Des­ig­nat­ed Ac­tiv­i­ty No 37: (Re­cov­ery re­cy­cling or in­cin­er­a­tion of waste, where it refers to the "es­tab­lish­ment, mod­i­fi­ca­tion, ex­pan­sion, de­com­mis­sion­ing or aban­don­ment of a fa­cil­i­ty for han­dling, stor­age, treat­ment or dis­pos­al of haz­ardous sub­stance). "In ad­di­tion, for trans­port­ing the e-waste across our bor­ders, the Basel Con­ven­tion is utilised, she added. She said as far as reg­u­lat­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions and in­dus­tries, the EMA cur­rent­ly op­er­ates with­in the con­fines of the CEC con­di­tions con­tained in the cer­tifi­cate. Cur­rent­ly on­ly one CEC has been is­sued for dis­pos­al of e-waste. Asked if the EMA would be get­ting in­volved on clamp­ing down on com­pa­nies act­ing with­out prop­er li­cence or cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, Bachan said the EMA would have to do more in­ves­ti­ga­tions on these com­pa­nies (if ex­ist­ing) to see if they pre­date the CEC rules.