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But the issue remains urgent, not only because of new laws in Europe and Asia around manufacturing and recycling toxic materials in electronics, but also because of the massive environmental and health problems created by e-waste dumping. A host of companies and non-profits are worki on e-waste issues, and last month saw a series of developments happen in rapid succession.
I spoke with Barbara Kyle, the national coordinator for the Electronics Takeback Coalition, about e-waste in the news and how companies can get out in front of their problems with toxics.
Matthew Wheeland: Great. Barbara, thanks so much for taking the time to talk today. I wanted to talk to you because it seems like in the last few weeks there's been sort of a landslide of events about e-waste take back in several different forms. And so I wanted to get your take on what exactly has gone down and how significant are each of these events?
Barbara Kyle: So one of the things that's most recently happened is a report came out last week from the federal GAO that was a pretty scathing report about the problem of e-waste exports from the U.S. and how it's really ending up being dumped on developing countries around the world.
And it's significant that this is really the first time the federal government has acknowledged and really focused attention on this issue. It's something that the NGOs at our organization, particularly our partner organization the Basel Action Network, has been talking about for a long time. Greenpeace has. A lot of groups have. It's been in the media.
But the federal government has never really shown a light on this problem until this report. And it basically acknowledges that our e-waste is flowing out of the U.S. almost without restriction and ending up in the developing nations around the world. A lot of it goes to China or other parts of Asia. China and India in particular. Or in countries in West Africa, where it's really handled in a very dangerous way.
It's very -- there's some very unsafe practices there where it's basically bashed and burned just to get at the metals in these products and the workers are exposed to horrific toxins in the process. Our government is well aware of it, but really not doing much to stop it and it's a practice that continues. And the few regulations the EPA does have that would restrict this -- at least in one category is CRT, cathode ray tubes, they don't enforce.
So the end result is it's just all going out the door. And we think that needs to be stopped and could easily be stopped. The federal government could easily take action to ban the export of the toxic waste to developing countries and that's in fact what we're hoping Congress will do in the next session.
MW: And along those lines, I think the day of or the day after the release of that GAO report there was some activity I believe in both houses of Congress around that. It wasn't so far as to actually present legislation was it? It was just further discussions of the export of toxic electronic waste?
BK: That's right. And it's in the form of a resolution. So it's a non-binding resolution. Representative Gene Green of Texas had introduced it in the House at the end of July. And the day after the GAO report, Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio introduced a similar resolution in the Senate.
And it basically says Congress needs to act on this to ban the export of toxic e-waste to developing countries. So it's -- while it's a non-binding resolution, it's definitely a signal that these are legislatures who intend to lead on this issue. It's a way to already engage members to ask them to be co-sponsors of it. And while it's not something that I think is ever even gonna get voted on, it's still a way to engage and indicate that this is an issue they take seriously and expect to see moved in their legislative chambers next year.
MW: Okay. One of the other things that happened, I think it was just last week. Greenpeace released its quarterly -- its latest quarterly report card for electronics manufacturers. And Greenpeace has said and has shown that their report cards in the past have helped to speed up or even move companies further down the line of -- towards green products, whether it's energy efficiency, whether it's manufacturing with recycling in mind or minimizing the amount of toxics used in manufacturing. Do you see NGOs pushing the ball forward -- pushing the ball further going forward or do you think this is going to move into legislative realm soon?
BK: Well, without a doubt the NGOs pushing on these companies has had an impact and Greenpeace's report card has been a big part of that. We've also been, for the last almost a year, campaigning on the television companies in particular with the digital conversion deadline happening next year in February. We've been focusing a lot of attention on the television industry here because until recently there was no TV company that offered a take back program, while the computer companies have had these for a couple of years at least.
None of the television companies were taking back old TVs and everybody's getting rid of old TVs because everybody's buying new ones. So the very companies that are making money off selling us the whatever it is, 30 or 40 million new flat panels every year, were doing nothing to take back the old ones and make sure that they were getting recycled. And so we've seen some progress on that.
And last year Sony was the first TV company to offer a takeback program. They'll take back basically TVs and anything with Sony's name on it at their designated collection sites. Now, there's not enough sites yet, but they are adding to their list all the time. And so that's a growing program. LG Electronics announced a takeback program just this past month in early August using the same collection sites as Sony. They work with the same collection -- the same recycler.
And then just a couple of weeks ago Samsung announced that they will be launching their takeback program in October. So we're looking forward to more details on that, but also a takeback program for all of their products. Samsung is the global sales leader of televisions globally and in the U.S.. So that's a huge step forward now to have those three companies with take back programs, whereas a year ago these companies not only weren't doing it, they were lobbying against legislation that would require them to take responsibility for their products in the states. So that's a big turn around pretty quickly for this industry.
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