The U.S. is the only developed country in the world that has not approved an international treaty controlling trade in hazardous waste from richer to poorer countries, called the 1989 Basel Convention.  The entire European Union has enforced it with the U.S., Canada, Japan and some others actively opposing this ban.

In the United States, 11%-14% of e-waste is estimated to be sent to recyclers with the high possibility the electronics will not be recycled. Instead, they will be shipped overseas and the remainder of the e-waste is dumped or burned in landfills and incinerators. These disposal methods fail to reclaim valuable materials or manage toxic materials safely contaminating our soil, water, and air.  According to E-Steward, it is estimated that “70%-80% of the e-waste that is given to recyclers is exported to less developed countries.” In those exported countries the workers are paid low wages and with a weak legal system they are not able to protect the environment, workers and the communities.

In these underdeveloped countries ancient technologies such as open air burning and riverside acid baths are used to extract a few materials. The rest of the toxic materials are dumped whereever it is convenient to do so. A large amount of hazardous e-waste from the United States is sent to U.S. prisons as well. The e-waste that has been sent to the prisons is processed in less-regulated environments without the workers having proper protection.

(Some have a solution to the e-waste by sending equipment and parts for re-use to other countries, but several falsely label scrap as reusable when in fact importing countries are left with unusable equipment.)

Released in 2005, a report and film by BAN The Digital Dump: Exporting Reuse and Abuse to Africa, showed Africa seeking working equipment, but instead received unusable equipment. BAN also bought hard drives that were imported into Africa with massive amounts of private data freely available for criminal utilization. The Government Accountability Office, which is the U.S. Congress watchdog, wrote a report called “Electronic Waste: EPA Needs to Better Control Harmful U.S. Exports through Stronger Enforcement and More Comprehensive Regulation,” which describes the crisis as the inadequacy of legislation to control e-waste exports and the lack of EPA enforcement. The responsible thing to do is find a recycler with the right credentials who has a watchdog auditing them.