Among America’s 140 million cellular phone users, Mia Shabazz is not unusual. She has one phone gathering dust in a drawer, another in her purse that’s about to join the one at home and a third she’s set to buy.
Peering into the glass case of a cellular phone sales display, one of five scattered around a Boston shopping mall, Ms. Shabazz bobs on her toes with excitement.
“That one’s kind of cute — I think I want a flip phone,” she says.
Plucking it out of the display case, a T-Mobile salesman hands it to her along with his pitch: When she changes phones next time, she can just remove a chip inside this one and put it in her new phone — no need to reprogram all those numbers.
That’s handy — but it also keeps environmentalists such as Eric Most lying awake at night, wondering what will happen to those hundreds of millions of “old” cellular phones. Indeed, all those tiny phones, along with VCRs, fax machines, televisions and the growing profusion of other electronic devices, are producing a slow-motion avalanche of obsolete consumer electronics, or “e-waste.”
The problem could spike early this year as the new cellular phones and digital TVs, computer monitors and cameras snapped up during the holidays send the conventional models on a slow trek to the closet and then the dump. Alternatives such as recycling or reuse are in their infancy, at least in the United States. In all, about 3 billion units of consumer electronics will be scrapped through 2010, predicts a new report by the International Association of Electronics Recyclers (IAER).
“Americans already have a large inventory of obsolete consumer electronics sitting in their homes,” says John Powers, a consultant to the electronics recycling industry. “The pace of technological change in consumer electronics seems to be growing. So in five years, that buildup is going to be significant.”
So far, e-waste represents less than 1 percent of total municipal solid waste, the Environmental Protection Agency reports, but the fraction belies its potential pollution impact.
More than other municipal solid waste, e-waste is larded with heavy metals that leach into groundwater. Chromium, zinc, lead, copper, manganese, selenium and arsenic are common on electronic circuit boards. The threat from those is growing as the volume in landfills grows.
“[The Greater Washington area] probably is one of the front-runners in doing something about the problem,” says Sarah Manning, business partner and wife of Scott Wilson, with whom she owns Subtraction LLC in Laurel, a member of the IAER.
Anticipating the need for getting rid of consumer electronics in the wake of the year-2000-bug scare, they founded the company in 1999 and made a profit the first year. Mr. Wilson was in the demolition business until he got in on the ground floor of recycling e-waste from counties and various government agencies.
“We take equipment from people and only charge for certain items,” Ms. Manning explains. “The items that contain hazmat materials, such as monitors and TVs, we have to send to an outfit in New Jersey that is suited to take the lead content to a smelter, where it then is recycled.”
The couple make their money from the precious metals — gold, palladium and silver — contained in items they collect for free, such as circuit boards.
“It’s modern-day gold mining,” she says. The metals are extracted at a source on the East Coast that she won’t name — the field has become very competitive of late, she notes — and the rest is sold for scrap. The company has contracts with Howard and Prince George’s counties, among others, which contract with it to handle public-collection sites that usually operate on certain days in spring and summer. The couple also respond to individual homeowners. Cost of removing equipment depends on type and size of equipment.
Consider cellular phones. Though tiny, they add up to a big pollution threat because they have the shortest average life span among consumer electronics — 1.5 years — according to a November report by Inform, an environmental group.
Most of the phones still work but are technologically or aesthetically obsolete. That means that by 2005, an estimated 100 million more cellular phones will join the 400 million on their first stop before the dump — in drawers and basements.
A recent ruling by the Federal Communications Commission could accelerate the trend. The FCC is allowing cellular phone subscribers to switch carriers — and take their phone numbers with them. Phones can be reprogrammed, but many are not compatible with the new company’s equipment, so it’s often less expensive for companies to issue a new phone.
Bottom line: The move is expected to generate up to 30 million more obsolete phones, containing lead and beryllium, that could head to the dump. The metals leach into groundwater, points out Mr. Most, author of the Inform report.
Computers may represent an even bigger problem. Some 300 million to 600 million personal computers in the United States could be headed to dumps in the next few years — many of them overseas, says Ted Smith, executive director of the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition. The group estimates that up to 80 percent of old computers end up being exported to places such as China and Vietnam, where children and peasants pick apart the toxic innards for about $1 a day.
It’s not just the dropping cost that’s accelerating the tech turnover, but fashion as well, says Danielle Levitas, consumer research analyst for market-research firm IDC. “We’re starting to see people buying not out of necessity, but because something is newer, bigger or flatter.”
Indeed, flatter was the rage this Christmas and is likely to be for several years, as flat-screen video display prices are dropping fast.
Recycling efforts for e-waste, or “e-scrap,” as the 400-plus-member electronics recycling industry group calls it, are still in their infancy. Just one-tenth of e-waste, about 200,000 tons a year, gets recycled. Also, while thousands of donated used cellular phones have found their way into the hands of the needy or are resold, less than 1 percent of the millions of phones discarded annually is recycled for raw materials or refurbished, Inform says.
Eventually, the private sector could boost recycling in a big way, but state and federal efforts so far have fallen short, environmentalists charge.
To fix the problem in the long run will require increased durability, standardized design, designs that facilitate disassembly and reduction of toxic components, experts say. The ultimate solution, Mr. Smith says, would be for the federal government to require manufacturers to take financial responsibility for the products from beginning to end.
Staff writer Ann Geracimos contributed to this story.
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