What is the e-waste problem?

The e-waste problem is portrayed in one or a combination of X ways. <...> I study the geography of electronic discards, often called 'e-waste'. I am interested in many aspects of it and try to approach the issue as what Latour (2005) calls a 'matter of concern'. There are many things at stake with e-waste as a matter of concern, but one of the important ones is 'numbers': whose numbers are correct? Indeed, the quantity, quality, and- more often -absence of data on or for e-waste is a major source of controversy for those that study it. With that brief introduction, here are excerpts of a recent news item that offers plenty of controversy:

U.S. Isn’t Flooding the Third World With E-Waste

By Adam Minter May 26, 2013 7:30 PM GMT-0230

Some is recycled; some is repaired and refurbished for reuse; and some is thrown into landfills or incinerators. Almost none of it, however, is “dumped” overseas.

that almost 83 percent of what was put into American recycling bins in
2011 was repaired, dismantled or recycled domestically.

According to the same survey, only 0.13 percent of the 4.4 million tons of e-waste that Americans generated in 2011 was sent overseas for “final disposal” - a term that explicitly excludes recycling and reuse - with an additional --3 percent sent abroad for “unknown” purposes.

Reality is a far cry from the
long-standing claim, first made by the Basel Action Network, a
Seattle-based nongovernmental organization in 2002, that as much as 80
percent of U.S. e-waste is exported to the developing world. Amazingly, even with the wide currency the claim has enjoyed over the years among environmental organizations and the media, it was never based on a systematic study.

Misguided Efforts

This misunderstanding has led to several efforts at erecting partial export bans on U.S. electronics to developing countries, which - -other studies demonstrate -- import them as cheap and sustainable alternatives to new equipment. As a result, perfectly usable electronics are diverted into a recycling stream, where they are turned into raw materials, rather than into markets where they can be reused for years.

There are no statistics on how many used gadgets were exported from the U.S. to the developing world in 2002. Nor, for that matter, can anyone say for sure what happened to those gadgets. No doubt, many were broken down in developing-world facilities, where low-technology and often-hazardous methods of recycling and disposal were employed (such as the use of acids to strip copper and other metals from circuit boards in open, unprotected environments).

Anecdotally, I have been told by recyclers in southern China that cheap, secondhand electronics exported from the U.S. and, to a lesser extent, the European Union were used by Chinese computer labs, offices and dormitories in the 1990s through the mid-2000s, when new gadgetry simply wasn’t affordable. (There has been no comprehensive survey to verify these claims, however.)

It was a good deal for the U.S., too: In the 1990s and early 2000s, America didn’t really have an electronics-recycling sector, and those machines would have been put in a landfill if China hadn’t wanted them. Nonetheless, as China developed, and incomes rose, demand for those used machines dropped off.

The good news is that a similar cycle is occurring in Africa, where used electronics from the EU and the U.S. have become a critical means of bridging the global digital gap. Unlike Chinese imports in the 1990s and early 2000s, the African imports are being surveyed and quantified.

For example, a 2011 study by the United Nations Environment Program determined that only 9 percent of the used electronics imported by Nigeria - a country that is regularly depicted as a dumping ground for foreign e-waste - didn’t work or were unrepairable, and thus bound for a recycler or a dump. The other 91 percent were reusable and bound for consumers who couldn’t afford new products.

Initial Comments

In the above article excerpt I have highlighted actors and sites with green and various claims in blue. What do we learn as a consequence? First, that there are many actors and many sites in the issue of e-waste.

Actors and sites (in order of appearance):

the US
the Third World
Americans
landfills
dumps
a survey
US e-waste
the US International Trade Commission
some 5,200 businesses (presumably US based)
a claim about how much e-waste the US exports to developing countries (since that claim enjoys wide currency)
environmental organizations
the media
US electronics
developing countries
other studies
low-technology recycling and disposal methods
acids
recyclers
European Union
Chinese labs, dorms, and offices
Africa
used electronics
Chinese imports
African imports
United Nations Environmental Programme
Nigeria
consumers

Second, we learn that the journalist, Adam Minter, claims there is a dispute or controversy: on the one hand, an environmental organization -the Basel Action Network (BAN) -claims that "as much as 80 percent" of US e-waste is exported to "the developing world". On the other hand, there are claims based on survey research that almost exactly match BAN's claim, but in reverse -"83 percent of what was put into American recycling bins in 2011 was repaired, dismantled or recycled domestically". So which number is correct - and is this even the right question to be asking?

Let's start with BAN's claim. In 2002 BAN published a report called Exporting Harm: the high-tech trashing of Asia. On page 1 of that report the organization states: "...informed recycling industry sources estimate that between 50 to 80 percent of the E-waste collected for recycling in the western U.S. are not recycled domestically" (BAN, 2002). Reading through the report several different versions of the latter statement are noticeable. For example, on page 11 the report reads, "[i]nformed industry insiders have indicated that around 80% of what comes through their doors will be exported to Asia, and 90% of that has been destined for China" (BAN, 2002); and on p. 14 under the heading 'How much E-waste is Exported?' the report states, "The short answer is that nobody really knows. yet anecdotal evidence on E-waste exported by the U.S. to Asia is abundant" and buttresses that claim with a photograph of asset tags accompanied with text that reads, "Just some of many institutional labels from the United States found on computers in Guiyu, China in December 2001". The report continues with a statement that "[v]ery knowledgeable and informed industry sources, however, have estimated that around 80% of what is diverted to recycling [in the US] is actually exported to Asia" (BAN, 2002: 14). An endnote following the latter claim attributes it to a telephone interview BAN conducted with someone named Mike Magliaro of Life-Cycle Business Partners in Salem, New Hampshire in February 2002 (BAN, 2002: 14 and 50, endnote 41).

A common tactic amongst academic researchers is to rely on search services such as Scopus and Web of Science to track the citation history of a given publication. According to Scopus, BAN's report has been cited 165 times as of today, 19 February 2014.
 
  [1]: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-26/stop-the-baseless-panicking-over-u-s-e-waste.html