National Sustainability Teacher’s Academy

1-2-3 Presentations 1 Article read by your group 2 Minutes to share what you learned 3 People per group

Tips for making an effective slideshow presentation Your slides should tell your story visually, while you tell your story verbally. When it comes to text, less is more. Think sleek and simple, not flashy and loud.

Overview Each group will have 25 minutes to read one recent article about the problems posed by electronic waste, and create a 2 minute presentation to share with the class. Your presentation should meet the requirements described below

Presentation Each 1-2-3 Presentation should

Summarize the article and present the key points Discuss how the topic of the article relates to each of the Three

Pillars of Sustainability Provide at least one example of how the topic of the article relates to

your life

Articles Group 1: Ghana: Digital Dumping Grounds Group 2: China: The Electronic Wastebasket of the World Group 3: The Story of Electronics Group 4: UN Seeks to Solve the Growing Global E-Waste Problem Group 5: Everything We Know About Google’s Modular Phone Group 6: Can “Urban Mining” solve the world’s e-waste problem? Group 7: Dialing Back Cell Phone Waste

1-2-3 Presentations: Electronic Waste

10/12/2015 FRONTLINE/World Ghana: Digital Dumping Ground | PBS

http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/ghana804/video/video_index.html 1/21

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Story HomeSynopsis & VideoInteractive Map: The Global Trade in Electronic WasteFAQ: The Good Recycling GuideVideo Interview: The Dark Side of the Information AgeSlideshow: "Sodom and Gomorrah"Where the Law Stands on EWasteShare Your Reaction

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+ Ghana: Digital DumpingGround

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10/12/2015 FRONTLINE/World Ghana: Digital Dumping Ground | PBS

http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/ghana804/video/video_index.html 2/21

On the outskirts of Ghana's biggest city sits a smoldering wasteland, a slum carvedinto the banks of the Korle Lagoon, one of the most polluted bodies of water onearth. The locals call it Sodom and Gomorrah.

Correspondent Peter Klein and a group of graduate journalism students from theUniversity of British Columbia have come here as part of a global investigation totrack a shadowy industry that's causing big problems here and around the world.

Their guide is a 13yearold boy named Alex. He shows them his home, a smallroom in a mass of shanty dwellings, and offers to take them across a dead river to anotorious area called Agbogbloshie.

Agbogbloshie has become one of the world's digital dumping grounds, where theWest's electronic waste, or ewaste, piles up hundreds of millions of tons of iteach year.

The team meets with Mike Anane, a local journalist who has been writing about theboys at this ewaste dump.

“Life is really difficult; they eat here, surrounded by ewaste,” Anane tells them.“They basically are here to earn a living. But you can imagine the healthimplications.”

Some of the boys burn old foam on top of computers to melt away the plastic,leaving behind scraps of copper and iron they can collect to sell. The younger boysuse magnets from old speakers to gather up the smaller pieces left behind at theburn site.

Anane says he used to play soccer here as a kid, when it was pristine wetland. Sincethen, he's become one of the country's leading environmental journalists.

“I'm trying to get some ownership labels,” Anane tells reporters. “I'm collectingthem because you need them as evidence. You need to tell the world where thesethings are coming from. You have to prove it. Now, just look,” he says, pointing toan old computer with the label: “School District of Philadelphia.”

When containers of old computers first began arriving in West Africa a few yearsago, Ghanaians welcomed what they thought were donations to help bridge thedigital divide. But soon exporters learned to exploit the loopholes by labeling junkcomputers "donations," leaving men like Godson to sort it out.

Godson, one of the ewaste dealers who have set up shop close to the port, showsthe contents of the container he has bought.

“Some are from Germany and the U.K., and also from America,” he says, whenasked where the equipment has come from. He sorts through them looking forworking electronics that can be sold. He says that maybe 50 percent of the shipmentis junk and the rest he will be able to salvage in some way.

After it’s sorted, a lot of the contents of the container will still be dumped at theburn site outside of town.

Hard drives that can be salvaged are displayed at openair markets. Off camera,

10/12/2015 FRONTLINE/World Ghana: Digital Dumping Ground | PBS

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Ghanaians admit that organized criminals sometimes comb through these drives forpersonal information to use in scams.

As part of the investigation, one of the students buys a number of hard drives to seewhat is on them, secretly filming the transaction to avoid the seller's suspicions.

The drives are purchased for the equivalent of US$35.

The students take the hard drives to Regent University in the Ghanaian capital andask computer scientist Enoch Kwesi Messiah to help read what is on them.

Within minutes, he is scrolling through intimate details of people's lives, files leftbehind by the hard drives' original owners.

There is private financial data, too: credit card numbers, account information,records of online transactions the original owners may not have realized were eventhere.

“ I can get your bank numbers and I retrieve all your money from your accounts,”Messiah says. “If ever somebody gets your hard drive, he can get every informationabout you from the drive, no matter where it is hidden.”

That's particularly a problem in a place like Ghana, which is listed by the U.S. StateDepartment as one of the top sources of cyber crime in the world. And it's not justindividuals who are exposed. One of the drives the team has purchased contains a$22 million government contract.

It turns out the drive came from Northrop Grumman, one of America's largestmilitary contractors. And it contains details about sensitive, multimillion dollarU.S. government contracts. They also find contracts with the defense intelligenceagency, NASA, even Homeland Security.

When the drives’ data are shown to James Durie, who works on data security for theFBI, he's particularly concerned about the potential breach at the TransportationSecurity Administration (TSA).

“The government contracting process is supposed to be confidential. If I know howyou're hiring the people for security related job, TSA air marshals, then I canprepare a person to fit that model and get my guy in,” Durie says. “Once I have myguy in, you have no security.”

Northrop Grumman refused to speak to FRONTLINE/World on camera. But theydid issue a statement saying the potential security threat was disconcerting, and theypledged to investigate.

Right now there are no tough U.S. laws regulating the disposal of ewaste, leavingcompanies and consumers to sort out the claims of recyclers on their own.

Following the recycling process as a consumer would, students drop off some ewaste at a facility on America’s West Coast. They are wearing a hidden camera andare assured that what they are bringing in will be disposed of safely and locally.

One worker at the facility tells them: “What they literally do is dump it into a blastfurnace and it burns it all up; and all they get out of it is a bunch of ash and some ofthe precious metal. Everything else gets consumed, burnt. And that's an actual fact.”

10/12/2015 FRONTLINE/World Ghana: Digital Dumping Ground | PBS

http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/ghana804/video/video_index.html 4/21

The team notes the container numbers leaving the facility and, using public records,traces where they're sent. A few weeks later, their reporting takes them to the port ofHong Kong.

Just a few miles from Hong Kong’s port, hidden behind eightfoothigh corrugatedwalls, are mountains of computer monitors, printer cartridges from Georgia, relicsof old video arcades…

In China, ewaste has become big business.

The southern Chinese city of Guiyu has been completely built around the ewastetrade. Miles and miles of nothing but old electronics.

Jim Puckett is an environmental activist credited with discovering this harmful ewaste route to China. He has accompanied the team to Guiyu, a place he first visitedeight years ago, and calls it the dirty little secret of the hitech industry.

Video Puckett shot in 2001 was the first anyone had documented showing Westerncomputers being dumped in Guiyu. He found tens of thousands of people workinghere in the toxic trade. On this return visit, Puckett says things have gotten worse.

“I was there first in 2001 and it was shocking enough then. It had gone from verybad to really horrific. And what is happening there is rather apocalyptic.”

One of the most disturbing things Puckett points out is happening behind closeddoors. Women literally cooking circuit boards to salvage the computer chips, whichhave trace amounts of gold.

“All these old mother boards and other types of circuit boards are being cooked dayin and day out, mostly by women, sitting there, breathing the lead tin solders. It’sjust quite devastating,” Puckett says.

To find out who is making money off this hazardous work, the team travels todowntown Hong Kong, home to hundreds of companies that import ewaste intoChina. No one here will speak to the reporters on camera, so they filmsurreptitiously.

Puckett and one of our reporters arrange to meet an ewaste broker willing toexplain the ewaste trade from the inside.

The man explains how hundreds of thousands of tons of American ewaste makesits way into China, despite laws intended to stop it.

“If we were to send you our material, would our recyclers get in trouble with theChinese government if they find their material coming into mainland?” Puckett asksthe broker.

“I can only say that if they get caught it has nothing to do with you. Because I buyfrom you, and then I sell to him. He is buying from me; he's not buying from you,”the man explains.

He says that since Hong Kong ships millions of containers to the U.S. and mostreturn empty, it's cheap to load them with ewaste, and too expensive to dispose ofthe waste safely no matter what recyclers claim.

10/12/2015 FRONTLINE/World Ghana: Digital Dumping Ground | PBS

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When the reporters ask what sort of due environmental due diligence there is, theman responds:

“I can only say one thing, if you want to do it environmentally, you have to pay.They have to invest in machinery, labor, everything. It isn’t worth it to pay so muchmoney.”

On the last trip of the assignment, the team heads to India. No longer just a dumpingground, India is now generating its own ewaste at an alarming rate, thanks to agrowing middle class with a taste for high tech.

“Last year, we sold more than seven million PCs in India,” says Indian businessmanRohan Gupta. “We generated 330,000 tons of electronic waste within India. So allthese are going to comeback to the waste stream sooner or later. It’s a growingindustry.”

Gupta is giving a tour of his stateoftheart facility outside Bangalore.

He is betting on a new Indian law that could force its high tech industry to recycleresponsibly and maybe one day put the digital dumps out of business.

At another recycling plant in Bangalore, they are literally trying to spin the wasteinto gold, refining the scrap in a safe environment and fashioning it into watchesand jewelry they market as eco friendly.

Plants like this could become part of a global network of certified ewaste recyclersthat Puckett's group is trying to get off the ground. But even Puckett realizes it's anuphill struggle.

“Even if you have a stateoftheart facility in a country like India, the free marketthere will send it to the lowest common denominator, to the worst facilities wherepeople are sitting on the streets just picking through it by hand,” he says. “It’s amyth to think that you can just solve the problem immediately with technologyalone.”

REACTION

Kendra ZacherleBemidji, MinnesotaI'm 17 years old and in the 11th grade i have a project on Ewaste. This video is areally hard thing to watch there are innocentpeople who are dying and getting hurt because of our reactions, and what we aredoing to their homes, and lands. They must not realize how much damagethis is doing just not to their countries but on what it is doing to ourENVIRONMENT. The U.S is not just killing them it is killing our PLANET, killingthe animals our TREES and how we breathe. People here in the U.S just need torelize they have to RECYCLE and help ourselves. I do not want to DIEjust because our REACTIONS and how we treat people. I'm not going against our

10/12/2015 China: The electronic wastebasket of the world CNN.com

http://www.cnn.com/2013/05/30/world/asia/chinaelectronicwasteewaste/ 1/6

China: The electronic wastebasket of the world

Updated 8:54 PM ET, Thu May 30, 2013

By Ivan Watson, CNN

Story highlights

U.N. report: "China now appears to be thelargest e-waste dumping site in the world"

Products originally produced in China are nowfinding their way back as electronic junk

The small town of Guiyu as been a major hubfor the disposal of e-waste

"When recycling is done in primitive ways ... itis hugely devastating for the local environment"

Did you ever wonder what happens to your old laptop orcellphone when you throw it away?

Chances are some of your old electronic junk will end upin China.

According to a recent United Nations report, "China nowappears to be the largest e-waste dumping site in theworld."

E-waste, or electronic waste, consists of everything fromscrapped TVs, refrigerators and air conditioners to that olddesktop computer that may be collecting dust in yourcloset.

Many of these gadgets were initially manufactured inChina. Through a strange twist of global economics, muchof this electronic junk returns to China to die.

"According to United Nations data, about 70% of electronic waste globally generated ended up in China," said

Where your used electronics go in China 03:38

10/12/2015 China: The electronic wastebasket of the world CNN.com

http://www.cnn.com/2013/05/30/world/asia/chinaelectronicwasteewaste/ 2/6

Ma Tianjie, a spokesman for the Beijing office of Greenpeace.

"Much of [the e-waste] comes through illegal channels because under United Nations conventions, there is aspecific ban on electronic waste being transferred from developed countries like the United States to countrieslike China and Vietnam."

For the past decade, the southeastern town of Guiyu,nestled in China's main manufacturing zone, has been amajor hub for the disposal of e-waste. Hundreds of

thousands of people here have become experts at dismantling the world's electronic junk.

On seemingly every street, laborers sit on the pavement outside workshops ripping out the guts of householdappliances with hammers and drills. The roads in Guiyu are lined with bundles of plastic, wires, cables and othergarbage. Different components are separated based on their value and potential for re-sale. On one street sits apile of green and gold circuit boards. On another, the metal cases of desktop computers.

At times, it looks like workers are reaping some giant plastic harvest, especially when women stand onroadsides raking ankle-deep "fields" of plastic chips.

In one workshop, men sliced open sacks of these plastic chips, which they then poured into large vats of fluid.They then used shovels and their bare hands to stir this synthetic stew.

"We sell this plastic to Foxconn," one of the workers said, referring to a Taiwanese company that manufacturesproducts for many global electronics companies, including Apple, Dell and Hewlett-Packard.

Dirty, dangerous work

This may be one of the world's largest informal recycling operations for electronic waste. In one family-rungarage, workers seemed to specialize in sorting plastic from old televisions and cars into different baskets. "Ifthis plastic cup has a hole in it, you throw it away," said a man who ran the operation, pointing to a pink plasticmug. "We take it and re-sell it."

But recycling in Guiyu is dirty, dangerous work. "When recycling is done properly, it's a good thing for theenvironment," said Ma, the Greenpeace spokesman in Beijing.

"But when recycling is done in primitive ways like we have seen in China with the electronic waste, it is hugelydevastating for the local environment."

According to the April 2013 U.N. report "E-Waste in China," Guiyu suffered an "environmental calamity" as aresult of the wide-scale e-waste disposal industry in the area.

Much of the toxic pollution comes from burning circuitboards, plastic and copper wires, or washing them withhydrochloric acid to recover valuable metals like copperand steel. In doing so, workshops contaminate workersand the environment with toxic heavy metals like lead,beryllium and cadmium, while also releasinghydrocarbon ashes into the air, water and soil, the reportsaid.

For first-time visitors to Guiyu, the air leaves a burningsensation in the eyes and nostrils.

Toxic tech

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10/12/2015 China: The electronic wastebasket of the world CNN.com

http://www.cnn.com/2013/05/30/world/asia/chinaelectronicwasteewaste/ 3/6

Studies by the Shantou University Medical Collegerevealed that many children tested in Guiyu had higherthan average levels of lead in their blood, which canstunt the development of the brain and central nervoussystem.

Piles of technological scrap had been dumped in amuddy field just outside of town. There, water buffalograzed and soaked themselves in ponds surrounded bypiles of electronic components with labels like Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Epson and Dell.

The enormous animals casually stomped throughmounds of sheet glass, which clearly had been removedfrom video monitors.

Flat screen displays often use mercury, a highly toxicmetal.

"Releases of mercury can occur during the dismantlingof equipment such as flat screen displays," wroteGreenpeace, in a report titled "Toxic Tech." "Incinerationor landfilling can also result in releases of mercury to theenvironment...that can bioaccumulate and biomagnify tohigh levels in food chains, particularly in fish."

Most of the workers in Guiyu involved in the e-wastebusiness are migrants from destitute regions of Chinaand poorly educated. Many of them downplayed thepotential damage the industry could cause to theirhealth.

They asked only to use their family names, to protecttheir identity.

"Of course it isn't healthy," said Lu, a woman who wasrapidly sorting plastic shards from devices like computerkeyboards, remote controls and even computer mice.She and her colleagues burned plastic using lighters andblow-torches to identify different kinds of material.

"But there are families that have lived here forgenerations ... and there is little impact on their health,"she said.

Several migrants said that while the work is tough, itallows them more freedom than working on factory lineswhere young children are not permitted to enter thepremises and working hours are stringent.

Used to be worse

Despite the environmental degradation and toxic fumespermeating the air, many in Guiyu said that conditionshave improved dramatically over the years.

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10/12/2015 China: The electronic wastebasket of the world CNN.com

http://www.cnn.com/2013/05/30/world/asia/chinaelectronicwasteewaste/ 4/6

"I remember in 2007, when I first came here, there was aflood of trash," said Wong, a 20-year-old man whoferried bundles of electronic waste around on amotorcycle with a trailer attached to it.

"Before people were washing metals, burning things andit severely damaged people's lungs," Wong added. "But

now, compared to before, the [authorities] have cracked down pretty hard."

But residents who did not work in the e-waste business offered a very different take on the pollution in Guiyu.

A group of farmers who had migrated from neighboring Guangxi province to cultivate rice in Guiyu told CNNthey did not dare drink the local well water.

They claimed if they tried to wash clothes and linens with the water, it turned fabrics yellow.

The head of the group, who identified himself as Zhou, had another shocking admission.

"It may not sound nice, but we don't dare eat the rice that we farm because it's planted here with all thepollution," Zhou said, pointing at water-logged rice paddy next to him.

Asked who did eat the harvested rice, Zhou answered: "How should I know? A lot of it is sold off ... they don'tdare label the rice from here as 'grown in Guiyu.' They'll write that its rice from some other place."

Not that surprising considering that the latest foodscandal to hit the country earlier this month is cadmium-laced rice. Officials in Guangzhou city, roughly 400kilometers away from Guiyu, found high rates ofcadmium in rice and rice products. According to thecity's Food and Drug Administration samples pulled froma local restaurant, food seller and two universitycanteens showed high levels of cadmium in rice and ricenoodles. Officials did not specify how the contaminatedrice entered the city's food supply.

CNN made several attempts to contact the Guiyu towngovernment. Government officials refused to commenton the electronic waste issue and hung up the phone.

However, it did appear that government efforts to restrictimports of foreign waste are reducing the flow of e-trashhere.

"Why are they stopping the garbage from reaching us?"asked one man who ran a plastic sorting workshop. "Ofcourse it's hurting our business," he added.

Domestic e-waste grows

The Chinese government had some success regulatinge-waste disposal with a "Home Appliance Old for NewRebate Program," which was tested from 2009 to 2011.

With the help of generous government subsidies, theprogram collected tens of millions of obsolete home

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10/12/2015 China: The electronic wastebasket of the world CNN.com

http://www.cnn.com/2013/05/30/world/asia/chinaelectronicwasteewaste/ 5/6

appliances, according to the U.N.

Even if Chinese authorities succeed in limiting smuggledsupplies of foreign garbage, the U.N. warns that thecountry is rapidly generating its own supply of e-waste.

"Domestic generation of e-waste has risen rapidly as aresult of technological and economic development," theU.N. reported. It cited statistics showing an exponentialsurge in sales of TV's, refrigerators, washing machines,air conditioners and computers in China over a 16-yearperiod.

To avoid a vicious cycle of pollution, resulting from boththe manufacture and disposal of appliances,Greenpeace has lobbied for manufacturers to use fewertoxic chemicals in their products.

The organization also has a message for consumerswho seem to swap their phones, tablets and othercomputer devices with increasing frequency.

"Think about where your mobile phone or where yourgadgets go," said Ma, the Greenpeace activist.

"When you think about changing [your phone], or buyinga new product, always think about the footprint that youput on this planet."

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Promoted Stories

Page 1 storyofelectronics.org

THE STORY OF ELECTRONICS:Annotated Script

By Annie Leonard

The other day, I couldn’t find my computer charger. My computer is my lifeline to my work, my friends, my music.

So I looked everywhere, even in that drawer where this lives. I know you have one too, a tangle of old chargers, the sad remains of electronics past.

How did I end up with so many of these things? It’s not like I’m always after the latest gadget. My old devices broke or became so obsolete I couldn’t use them anymore. And not one of these old chargers fits my computer. Augh. This isn’t just bad luck. It’s bad design.1 I call it “designed for the dump.”

“Designed for the dump” sounds crazy, right? But when you’re trying to sell lots of stuff, it makes perfect sense. It’s a key strategy

of the companies that make our electronics.2 In fact it’s a key part of our whole unsustainable materials economy.

Designed for the dump means making stuff to be thrown away quickly. Today’s electronics are hard to upgrade, easy to break, and impractical to repair. My DVD player broke and I took it to a shop to get fixed. The repair guy wanted $50 just to look at it! A new one at Target costs $39.3

In the 1960s, Gordon Moore, the giant brain and semiconductor pioneer, predicted that electronics

1. It may seem crazy, but many of these products are actually designed to break after a certain amount of time. This concept is known as “planned obsolescence” or “designed for the dump”. Planned obsolescence is designing and producing products with limited lifespans – so that they stop functioning or become undesirable within a specific time period. And it isn’t just electronics, products may be designed for obsolescence either through function, like a paper coffee cup or a machine with breakable parts, or through “desirability,” like a piece of clothing made for this year’s fashion and then replaced by something totally different next year.

2. For many years, designers and consumers have advocated for electronic products that are truly modular, so that consumers can simply swap one “obsolete” part for a newer part without having to discard an entire product. While there has been some progress in this regard, such as hard drives and disk drives that are easier to replace, electronics companies have been wary of the “modular model” since they prefer to sell new, whole units. Likewise, many have advocated for a “thin client” model of information delivery,

where consumers access data on the Internet – or “the cloud” – using quite simple hardware and software, but again, the large computer companies often see this model as a threat to their commodity sales. For more information, see http://www.geek.com/articles/chips/fully-modular-computers-20040312/ and http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2008/09/01/232086/Thin-client-computing-smartens-up.htm

3. And its not just DVD players—it’s this way with all sorts of electronic gadgets. Think about that printer cartridge replacement that costs more than a new printer, the iPod battery that you can’t replace, the cell phone charger that snaps. The list of electronics that are prohibitively expensive to upgrade or just plain impossible to repair goes on and on.

4. Moore’s Law is named after Intel co-founder Gordon Moore. In 1965, he stated that the number of transistors that can be placed on a computer chip will double every year. This translates into increases in processor speed, more memory, and other performance

Page 2 storyofelectronics.org

THE STORY OF ELECTRONICS

designers could double processor speed every 18 months. So far he’s been right. This is called Moore’s Law.4 But somehow the bosses of these genius designers got it all twisted up. They seem to think Moore’s Law means every 18 months we have to throw out our old electronics and buy more.

Problem is, the 18 months that we use these things are just a blip in their entire lifecycle. And that’s where these dump designers aren’t just causing a pain in our wallets. They’re creating a global toxic emergency!

See, electronics start where most stuff starts, in mines5 and factories. Many of our gadgets are made from more than 1,000 different materials, shipped from around the world to assembly plants.6

There, workers turn them into products, using loads of toxic chemicals, like PVC, mercury, solvents and flame retardants.7

Today this usually happens in far off places that are hard to monitor.8 But it used to happen near my home, in Silicon Valley, which thanks to the electronics industry is one of the most poisoned communities in the U.S.9

IBM’s own data revealed that its workers making computer chips had 40% more miscarriages and were significantly more likely to die from blood, brain and kidney cancer.10 The same thing is starting to

improvements. In 1975, Moore revised it to doubling every 2 years. Over time, the concept was shortened from 2 years to 18 months by others at Intel. This trend has continued for over 40 years. To learn more check out: ftp://download.intel.com/museum/Moores_Law/Video-transcripts/Excepts_A_Conversation_with_Gordon_Moore.pdf

5. Most of our electronics contain precious metals and minerals, some of which are referred to as “conflict minerals”. A particularly egregious example is coltan—or columbite-tantalite—a metallic ore that gets refined into tantalum, as well as tin, tungsten, and gold, all used in consumer electronics such as cell phones, DVD players, computers, and games consoles. The extraction and export of these four minerals from Africa have helped fuel environmental and social disruption, brutal violence and war in the Congo. See: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/27/opinion/27kristof.html?_r=2 and http://www.youtube.com/enoughproject#p/a/u/0/5Ycih_jMObQ

6. Over 1,000 materials, including solvents, brominated flame retardants, PVC, heavy metals, plastics and gases, are used to make electronic products and their components—semiconductor chips, circuit boards, and disk drives. A clunky CRT monitor can contain between four and eight pounds of lead alone (see Footnote 15). Big screen CRT TVs contain even more than that. Flat panel TVs and monitors contain less lead, but use lamps with mercury, which is very toxic in very small quantities. An EPA commissioned study noted that “approximately 70 percent of the heavy metals in municipal solid waste landfills are estimated to come from electronics discards. Heavy metals such as lead and mercury are highly toxic substances

that can cause well documented adverse health effects, particularly to children and developing fetuses.” http://www.epa.gov/oig/reports/2004/20040901-2004-P-00028.pdf These toxicants are released during the production, use, and disposal of electronic products, with the greatest impact at end-of-life, particularly when they are exported to developing nations. Harmful chemicals released from incinerators and leached from landfills can contaminate air and groundwater. The burning of plastics at the waste stage releases dioxins and furans, known developmental and reproductive toxins that persist in the environment and concentrate up the food-chain. Some of the worst end-of-life toxic impacts occur when e-waste is exported to developing nations, where crude, unsafe “processing” methods result in significant exposures. The plastics are burned in uncontrolled outdoor waste piles, emitting dioxin into residential areas; circuit boards are “cooked” to melt the lead solder, emitting toxic lead fumes; and acids are used to extract precious metals. http://www.ban.org/E-Waste/technotrashfinalcomp.pdf During the use phase, electronics can off-gas brominated flame retardants (BFRs), a group of toxic chemicals added to plastic casings. To read specifically on BFRs, see Footnote 14. The production phase of electronics is the most chemically intensive, particularly in the manufacture of semiconductors and other components, which use very toxic solvents such as methylene

Page 3 storyofelectronics.org

THE STORY OF ELECTRONICS

happen all around the world. 11 Turns out the high tech industry isn’t as clean as its image.

So, after its toxic trip around the globe, the gadget lands in my hands. I love it for a year or so and then it starts drifting further from its place of honor on my desk or in my pocket. Maybe it spends a little time in my garage before being tossed out.12

And that brings us to disposal, which we think of as the end of its life. But really it’s just moved on to become part of the mountains of e-waste we make every year.13

Remember how these devices were packed with toxic chemicals? Well there’s a simple rule of production: toxics in, toxics out. Computers, cell phones, TVs, all this stuff, is just waiting to release all their toxics when we throw them away. Some of them are slowly releasing this stuff even while we’re using them.14

You know those fat, old TVs that people are chucking for high-def flat screens? They each have about 5 pounds of lead in them.15 Lead! As in lead poisoning!16

So almost all this e-waste either goes from my garage to a landfill or it gets shipped overseas to the garage workshop of some guy in Guiyu, China whose job it is to recycle it.17

I’ve visited a bunch of these so-called recycling operations. Workers, without protective gear, sit on the ground, smashing open electronics to recover the valuable metals inside and chucking or burning the parts no one will pay them for. So while I’m on to my next gadget, my last gadget is off poisoning families

chloride, toluene, glycol ethers, xylene and trichloroethylene (TCE), which have been linked to elevated rates of cancers, including blood cancers, brain cancers, reproductive problems and birth defects among electronics workers and their offspring. http://www.ehjournal.net/content/5/1/30

7. See Footnote 6 and http://www.electronicstakeback.com/problem/toxics_problem.htm

8. Most electronics are manufactured in Asia, not by the companies whose brand names you know and go on the products, but by many contract manufacturing firms, sometimes called Electronics Manufacturing Services. Some of the largest of these include Foxconn, Flextronics, Quanta, Sanmina-SCI, Solectron, Celestica, and Jabil Circuit. There are also thousands of component manufacturers that make the individual components that get assembled into the final products. It’s practically impossible for any brand name company to provide any significant oversight of the workplace or environmental conditions in this complex supply chain. Many companies in the electronics industry support a voluntary code of conduct for workplace and environmental conditions, created by a group called the Electronics Industry Citizenship Coalition, or EICC. But working conditions at contract giant Foxconn’s plant in Shenzen, China, are so bad that 13 employees committed suicide in 2010 alone; mostly by jumping from the windows of the plant or dormitories. The company’s response was to install “anti-suicide nets” around the plant. http://www.dailytech.com/Report+Only+Escape+From+Hellish+Apple+iPhone+Factory+Was+Suicide/article18428.htm http://www.law.stanford.edu/publications/stanford_lawyer/issues/79/pdfs/sl79_kinks.pdf http://ehstoday.com/mag/ehs_imp_70124/

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/07/business/global/07suicide.html http://www.todayonline.com/World/EDC101013-0000091/New-allegations-against-Foxconn

9. When the semiconductor industry emerged in the 1970’s in Silicon Valley, it was touted as a new, clean industry. But over time, it came to light that these companies were using very toxic chemicals, like the solvent TCE, to produce computer chips. These chemicals were sometimes dumped, or leaked out of underground storage tanks, into the groundwater. The polluted water led to exposure of the surrounding communities and resulted in miscarriages and birth defects. Now, most of these companies have moved their production offshore to developing nations, leaving behind polluted “Superfund” sites that will cost millions to clean up. Silicon Valley is home to 29 toxic EPA “Superfund” sites – the highest concentration in the country. The Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition (SVTC) has a map of the sites at http://www.svtc.org/site/PageServer?pagename=svtc_silicon_valley_toxic_tour.

10. For decades IBM kept its own Corporate Mortality File (CMF), a concealed database tracking cause of death of all its employees. IBM workers were unaware of the CMF or what was in it until a lawsuit by IBM workers led to its release in 2000. Dr. Richard Clapp, from the Boston University School of Public Health, analyzed the data, and concluded that IBM workers involved in manufacturing (where they were exposed to solvents and other chemicals) have an increased risk of dying of cancer, especially cancers of the brain, blood, and kidneys. Over 300 IBM workers in the US, who were exposed to toxic chemicals at work, sued IBM and its chemical suppliers alleging their chemical exposures caused cancers, birth defects in offspring, and other chronic diseases. All but two of these claims were settled prior

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THE STORY OF ELECTRONICSin Guiyu or India or Nigeria.

Each year we make 25 million tonnes of e-waste which gets dumped, burned or recycled.18 And that recycling is anything but green. So are the geniuses who design these electronics actually… evil geniuses? I don’t think so, because the problems they’re creating are well hidden even from them.

You see, the companies they work for keep these human and environmental costs out of sight and off their accounting books. It’s all about externalizing the true costs of production.19 Instead of companies paying to make their facilities safe the workers pay with their health. Instead of them paying to redesign using less toxics villagers pay by losing their clean drinking water. Externalizing costs allows companies to keep designing for the dump – they get the profits and everyone else pays.

When we go along with it, it’s like we’re looking at this toxic mess and saying to companies “you made it, but we’ll deal with it.” I’ve got a better idea. How about “you made it, you deal with it”? Doesn’t that make more sense?

Imagine that instead of all this toxic e-waste piling up in our garages and the streets of Guiyu, we sent it to the garages of the CEOs who made it. You can bet that they’d be on the phone to their designers demanding they stop designing for the dump.

to trial under confidentiality orders that were insisted upon by IBM and the chemical companies. Two claims went to trial by IBM workers sick with cancer. Despite the fact that the trial was about fraudulent concealment claims, the judge did not allow the jury to hear any mention of IBM‘s Corporate Mortality File, let alone Dr. Clapp’s analysis of its contents. The trial ended with no finding at all on the cause of the two workers’ cancers. To read Dr. Clapp’s report see: “Mortality among US employees of a large computer manufacturing company: 1969–2001”, Dr. Richard Clapp, 19 Oct 2006, http://www.ehjournal.net/content/5/1/30 Also see: http://www.nyupress.org/product_info.php?products_id=3002 and http://www.salon.com/technology/feature/2001/07/30/almaden1

11. Attending a recent meeting on occupational health and safety issues in Asia, science writer Elizabeth Grossman described the following scene: Women from China who have worked at a plant assembling cell phones -- producing as many as 300 to 400 an hour -- report that miscarriages and menstrual problems are common among their

colleagues. We hear the same from Indonesian and Korean women. Similar stories come from the Philippines. Men who work in factories assembling automotive electronics and DVD players report co-workers who have died of cancer - lung cancer and brain tumors. Two young Indonesian women who work in electronics factories ask me if chemicals related to their work or perhaps to the “instant food” they all eat may have caused their co-workers’ breast cancers. Occupational health advocates working on behalf of Samsung workers in Korea have now documented 96 cases of cancer -- about a third of these fatal -- among employees of the company’s semiconductor plants. Many of these are young people. To read the full article see http://scienceblogs.com/thepumphandle/2010/08/apha_ohs_section_awards_honor.php

12. Consumers typically use cell phones for an average of 18 months before disposing of them, a much shorter period than the lifecycle of older phones. See http://www.enviroliteracy.org/article.php/1119.html And the situation isn’t much different with computers. According to the EPA, laptops are used for only 2 to 3 years by the initial purchasers. See page 22 of http://www.epa.gov/wastes/conserve/materials/ecycling/docs/app-2.pdf

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Making companies deal with their e-waste is called Extended Producer Responsibility or Product Takeback.20 If all these old gadgets were their problem, it would be cheaper for them to just design longer lasting, less toxic, and more recyclable products in the first place. They could even make them modular, so that when one part broke, they could just send us a new piece, instead of taking back the whole broken mess.21

Already takeback laws are popping up all over Europe and Asia.22 In the U.S. many cities and states are passing similar laws – these need to be protected and strengthened.23

It’s time to get these brainiacs working on our side. With takeback laws and citizen action to demand greener products, we are starting a race to the top, where designers compete to make long-lasting, toxic-free products. So, let’s have a green Moore’s law. How about: the use of toxic chemicals will be cut in half every 18 months? The number of workers poisoned will decline at an even faster rate?

We need to give these designers a challenge they can rise to and do what they do best – innovate. Already, some of them are realizing they’re too smart to be dump designers and are figuring out how to make computers without PVC or toxic flame retardants.24 Good job guys.

But we can do even more.

When we take our e-waste to recyclers, we can make sure they don’t export it to developing countries.25 And when we do need to buy new gadgets, we can choose greener products.26

But the truth is: we are never going to just shop our way out of this problem because the choices available to us at the store are limited by choices of designers and policymakers outside of the store. That’s why we

13. In the US alone, we chuck over 400 million electronic gadgets in a single year and that number is continuing to grow. See http://www.electronicstakeback.com/problem/problem_index2.htm

14. Brominated flame retardants (BFRs) are in a considerable percentage of electronics. A 2005 report released by Health Care Without Harm called Brominated Flame Retardants: Rising Levels of Concern, has this to say: Whereas flame resistant products save lives and prevent property damage, there are increasing concerns about the environmental and health effects of flame retardants such as BFRs. Overall, the available literature on BFR toxicology is incomplete. Based on the available data, however, we know that BFRs are associated with several health effects in animal studies, including neurobehavioral toxicity, thyroid hormone disruption, and possibly cancer. Additionally, there are data gaps but some evidence that BFRs can cause developmental effects, endocrine disruption, immunotoxicity, reproductive, and long-term effects, including second-generation effects. http://www.noharm.org/lib/downloads/bfrs/BFRs_Rising_Concern.pdf We are exposed to BFRs in many ways. We ingest it via meat and dairy products, where it’s been absorbed into the food chain and is found widely in the environment and animal tissues. Also, many

studies have found BFRs in samples of household dust and indoor air, suggesting that some of the BFRs found in our bodies comes from inhaling it in dust. Because BFRs are used in multiple products, such as electronics, furniture and textiles, some studies have not attributed each product’s contribution to the totals found. • One dust study in Indonesia found that BFR levels were higher in living rooms with computers than in living rooms without computers: http://www.terrapub.co.jp/onlineproceedings/ec/02/ pdf/ERA15.pdf • Another study was able to associate the high levels of one type of BFR (deca-BDE) in dust collected in certain homes with the same BFR found in televisions in those homes: http://pubs.acs.org /doi/abs/10.1021/es702964a • And in the lab, electronics have been determined to emit flame retardants, with emissions increasing as much as 500 times as the

temperature increased: http://bit.ly/cZHSlG To read more about BFRs in dust see the following papers by EWG and SVTC: http://www.ewg.org/reports/inthedust and http://www.svtc.org/site/PageServer?pagename=svtc_bfrs_in_electronics

15. Old style TVs and computers contain a large glass Cathode Ray Tube (CRT). The glass contains lead, both to shield against radiation

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THE STORY OF ELECTRONICS

need to join with others to demand stronger laws on toxic chemicals and on banning e-waste exports.27

There are billions of people out there who want access to the incredible web of information and entertainment electronics offer. But it’s the access they want, not all that toxic garbage. So let’s get our brains working on sending that old design for the dump mentality to the dump where it belongs and instead building an electronics industry and a global society that’s designed to last.

and to improve the optical quality of the picture, and it does a lot of other nasty things too (see Footnote 16). Also, it’s not just old TVs and computers, lead is present in solder used in many electronic products. To learn more check out: http://computer.howstuffworks.com/question678.htm

16. Lead exposure can cause many health effects, particularly damage to the nervous system. Kids are especially vulnerable to lead exposures, which can cause brain damage and death at high levels. Studies link lead exposure in children to lower IQs, higher incidents of ADHD, hearing and balance problems. http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/csem/lead/pbphysiologic_effects2.html

17. E-waste is growing two to three times faster than other types of municipal waste. While most e-waste in the US still goes into the trash, the amount going to recyclers is increasing. However, 50 to 80 per cent of the e-waste that is collected by recyclers is shipped overseas to developing countries in Asia and Africa where our outdated electronics are creating a global toxic emergency. Once exported, e-waste is typically smashed and burned in backyard operations with little to no health and safety precautions. The burning and dismantling of toxic electronic products under these conditions has led to widespread air and water pollution from toxic metals, dioxins, and other serious health hazards. Scientists have documented high levels of these pollutants in the local environments, and they have also found them in test samples from children and other residents of these communities. For example, health researchers showed that children living in Guiyu had significantly higher blood lead levels than those living in another community that was not polluted from e-waste. http://www.ban.org/E-Waste/technotrashfinalcomp.pdfhttp://www.ban.org/Library/TheDigitalDump.pdf http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1913570 http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/glep.2004.4.4.76 http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d081044.pdf http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/geopedia/E-Waste http://www.svtc.org/site/PageServer?pagename=citizensatrisk

18. 25 million metric tonnes per year or, in US measurement, roughly 27 tons. http://www.greenpeace.org/international/Global/international/planet-2/report/2010/2/toxic-transformers-briefing.pdf

19. Externalized costs, also known as “hidden costs,” are any kind of loss or damage such as illness, environmental degradation, or economic disruption caused by industries engaged in natural resource extraction, production, distribution, and disposal, but not

paid for by those industries. Externalized costs are most often borne by workers, community members and the environment, rather than by industries and corporations.

20. Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR, also called “Producer Takeback”) is a product and waste management system in which manufacturers – not the consumer or government – take responsibility for the collection and environmentally safe management of their product when it is no longer useful or is discarded. When manufacturers take responsibility for the recycling of their own products they no longer pass the cost of disposal on to the government and taxpayer, but build it into the price of the product (internalizing the cost). This gives them a financial incentive to use environmentally safer materials in the production process; design the product to be more recyclable; create safer recycling systems; and to keep waste costs down. http://www.electronicstakeback.com/legislation/about_epr.htm http://www.electronicstakeback.com/legislation/about_epr.htm http://www.miller-mccune.com/business-economics/the-smoldering-trash-revolt-7306

21. There are two ways in which modularity would be really helpful – for repairs and for upgrades. There has been some headway made in this arena, but we still have a long way to go. Electronics manufacturer ASUS developed a prototype for a modular computer a few years ago, that was like a shelf onto which you stack modules (hard drive, battery, card reader, etc) the size of CDs. But the parts – motherboards, CPU’s, energy supplies - that would need to be upgraded to keep up with technology – like new software, faster processors, energy savings – were not designed to be simple to replace for average computer user (making it a computer-geek-only option). Currently, the release of a new operating system is what prompts many PC users to purchase their next computer, since the existing design of these electronics makes it easier to replace an entire computer rather than upgrading it. Adopting modular design elements that make it easy to upgrade a computer in order to keep up with advancing technology would exponentially prolong its lifespan and keep these electronics out of the dump and on our desks.

22. Europe has led the way with the passage of the Waste Electrical and Electronic Directive in 2003, which established the first major takeback requirements throughout Europe. Other countries have

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followed suit, including Japan and China. http://ec.europa.eu/environment/waste/weee/index_en.htm

23. Twenty-three states have already passed e-waste legislation and New York City passed an e-waste law but it was recently pre-empted by a statewide law in New York. To see an updated list of states with e-waste legislation, check out: http://www.electronicstakeback.com/legislation/state_legislation.htm and http://www.electronicstakeback.com/index.htm

24. Some leading companies have been working with their suppliers to find safer alternatives to bromine and chlorine. High volume uses of bromine and chlorine in flame retardants and plastic resins like polyvinyl chloride (PVC) gained worldwide attention when scientific studies documented their link to the formation of dioxin, one of the most toxic chemicals around. Dioxins and other harmful chemicals are released into the environment during the burning and smelting of electronic waste. Even the most sophisticated incineration facilities generate low levels of dioxin, but the most significant dioxin contribution occurs in developing countries whose facilities are not designed to handle toxic materials. Apple has phased out the use of brominated and chlorinated flame retardants, in addition to PVC, mercury, arsenic, and lead. All new models of Nokia mobile phones are free of PVC, brominated and chlorinated compounds and antimony trioxide. New Sony Ericsson products are 99.9% free from all halogenated flame retardants. For more resources, see Footnote 26.

25. To ensure that your e-waste is recycled responsibly and not exported overseas, make sure that your recycler is a certified E-Steward. E-Stewards are recyclers who voluntarily adhere to the highest standards in the recycling industry: not to export e-waste to developing nations, not to send it to prison recycling, not to landfill/incinerate it. This program was developed by the non-profit Basel Action Network (BAN) as a voluntary pledge program – but it has recently been expanded into a rigorous certification program, with independent, accredited auditors. To find an E-Steward in your area go to: http://e-stewards.org/.

26. Two good sources to use are the Greenpeace Guide to Greener Electronics, and the ETBC Recycling report card, which grades companies on their efforts to take back and recycle their old products. http://www.electronicstakeback.com/reportcard.htm http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/campaigns/toxics/electronics/Guide-to-Greener-Electronics/

27. On the road to cleaner, greener electronics legislation Europe has taken an important step with the passage of the REACH (Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals) law. REACH puts the burden on the chemical producers and users to provide and share data about chemical hazards. http://www.chemsec.org/get-informed/eu-chemicals/reach There was additional progress made with the passage of the Restriction on Hazardous Substances (ROHS) in Europe, which limits the use of six substances in electronic products sold into the EU. But the follow up legislation to expand the list of restricted substances was less successful due to industry opposition. http://www.chemsec.org/images/stories/publications/ChemSec_publications/100602_RoHS_vote_Press_Release.pdf But the US is lagging behind, as there is very inadequate oversight, required testing, or disclosure of toxic chemicals in electronics or

most other products in the US. Under our current laws, chemical companies can introduce and sell chemicals in the marketplace, and it’s up to the EPA to “prove” when the chemicals are unsafe and shouldn’t be sold. This puts all the burden of testing and research on the government, instead of the companies selling the chemicals. It also means that it’s hard for manufacturers to find out the hazardous traits of chemicals they use in products. We need to adopt a more sensible approach to toxic chemical policy, where companies have to prove their chemicals are safe before they put them into products that go into our homes and schools. Some members of Congress are trying to change that by reforming the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) – our primary federal law on toxics. See http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2010/04/15/15greenwire-sen-

lautenberg-introduces-chemicals-reform-bil-25266.html and http://healthreport.saferchemicals.org/. Other signs of hope include a new bill to outlaw the export of hazardous e-waste that has been introduced in the US Congress, H.R. 6252, The Responsible Electronics Recycling Act. For more information, see http://www.electronicstakeback.com/legislation/summary_HR6252.htm And at the state level, California is establishing Green Chemicals program, http://coeh.berkeley.edu/greenchemistry/

10/12/2015 U.N. Seeks to Solve Growing Global EWaste Problem US News

http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2013/12/16/unseekstosolvegrowingglobalewasteproblem 1/3

By Allie Bidwell Dec. 16, 2013 | 11:45 a.m. EST + More

U.N. Seeks to Solve Growing Global EWaste ProblemSome electronics can harm people if they aren't discarded properly.

In just five years, all of the world's refrigerators, televisions, cell phones, computers and electronicdevices destined for disposal or recycling will grow by 33 percent, according to a study released by theUnited Nations Sunday.

The mountain of used electrical and electronic devices, known as "ewaste," is expected to grow from48.9 million metric tons worldwide in 2012 to 65.4 million metric tons in 2017; the weight equivalent of200 Empire State Buildings or 11 Great Pyramids of Giza, the study says.

[READ: Government Underestimates Methane Emissions by 50 Percent]

"Although there is ample information about the negative environmental and health impacts of primitiveewaste recycling methods, the lack of comprehensive data has made it hard to grasp the fullmagnitude of the problem," said Ruediger Kuehr, executive secretary of the U.N.'s Solving the EWasteProblem (StEP) Initiative, which conducted the study.

Ewaste is harmful to the environment, the StEP Initiative notes on its website, because those productscan contain toxic substances. When those electronic products are burned or put in a landfill, those toxicsubstances such as mercury, cadmium and lead can seep out.

The United States topped the list of the 184 countries analyzed for the total volume of ewastegenerated each year, at 9.4 million tons in 2012; followed by China, with 7.2 million tons. Bycomparison, the U.S. Environment Protection Agency reported the U.S. generated 1.9 million to 2.2

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10/12/2015 U.N. Seeks to Solve Growing Global EWaste Problem US News

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million tons of ewaste in 2005.

[MORE: Giant Pandas Could Help Solve the Global Energy Crisis]

The United States might have had such a higher volume, the report says, because there have beenmore electronic products put on the market in the past and therefore more are now ready to be retired.In 2012, for example, the United States put about 10 million tons of electrical and electronic equipmenton the market, compared with about 1 million tons in Canada.

Additionally, the amount of ewaste generated per person in the United States was much higher thanother countries.

In 2012, each person generated about 30,000 kilograms of ewaste in the United States, comparedwith 5.4 kilograms in China.

A separate study published in tandem with the U.N. report tracked the flow of electronic disposal andcollection across borders.

That study, conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the U.S. National Center forElectronics Recycling, found cell phones accounted for the largest quantity of used electronics in theUnited States.

[ALSO: Mercury Levels Dropping in Younger U.S. Women, Report Says]

The study's authors recommend creating trade codes that can be used to track electronic products.

"We cannot possibly manage complex, transboundary ewaste flows until we have a betterunderstanding of the quantities involved and the destinations," said Joel Clark, an MIT professor, in astatement. "This research is an important first step in that direction."

More News:

• 10 Ways to Save by Going Green

• Increased Air Conditioning Usage Threatens Global Energy Supply

• Scientists Release First Plan for National Ocean Exploration Program

TAGS: UN, EPA, environment, recycling

Allie Bidwell is an education reporter for U.S. News & World Report. You can follow heron Twitter or reach her at sbidwell@usnews.com.

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10/12/2015 Project Ara: Everything we know about Google's modular phone CNET

http://www.cnet.com/news/projectaraeverythingweknowaboutgooglesmodularphone/ 1/9

Connect with us

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Project Ara: Everything we knowabout Google's modular phoneWhat exactly is a "modular phone" and why would you want one? We take a look at all the thingswe know -- and don't -- with this build-it-yourself smartphone design.

CNET › Mobile › Phones › Project Ara: Everything we know about Google's modular phone

February 18, 20151:30 PM PST

Phones

by Jessica Dolcourt@jdolcourt

Google's Spiral 2 prototypecurrently has a 5-megapixel

camera that you could swap outfor a more powerful lens.

Juan Garzón/CNET

If you've ever wished you could pick from apile of parts and make your ownsmartphone, Project Ara is your Androidwish come true.

Run out of Google's Advanced Technologyand Projects group (ATAP), Ara proposesthat phone owners should be able to mix-and-match components to build the phonethey want to own, rather than acceptwhatever it is that phone makers thinkpeople want.

If you're unfamiliar with the concept, here'swhat we know so far about Google's intriguing DIY smartphone.

What a Project Ara phone looks like

In the prototype stage so far, Ara looks like a basic rectangular frame (they call itthe Endoskeleton) that's subdivided into smaller rectangular buckets. On the backare circuit boards and contacts. It's here that you snap in rectangular bricks foreach module, say one block for an 8-megapixel camera, and another block for theprocessor.

You can also slide in the screen you want and add other, more specializedequipment, say a medical or gaming add-on, that's far too niche for mainstreamphones. There are different-size frames for smaller or larger handsets.

Google's Project Ara lets you build your...

10/12/2015 Project Ara: Everything we know about Google's modular phone CNET

http://www.cnet.com/news/projectaraeverythingweknowaboutgooglesmodularphone/ 2/9

We've seen the Spiral 2 prototype at Google's Silicon Valley headquarters. Rightnow there are eight interchangeable modules. The goal is that owners will be ableto put any module anywhere on the phone, so the camera can live in any squareyou find most convenient.

Why you care

Project Ara is the ultimate form of customization. You choose every module, pickwhere its placed, select the color and visual design. That brings tremendousflexibility to phone owners, both in terms of getting the specs they want, and interms of cost.

Higher-end parts will cost more, but for those shopping on abudget, picking the specs you want will also give you yourchoice of what you spend your money on, and where yousave. Maybe you like a high-resolution screen, but you aren'tmuch of a shutterbug. That could potentially save you moneyover a phone with all-around high-end parts.

One of the most exciting possibilities with an Ara phone isswapping in specialized components, say a mini telephotolens, or a heart-rate monitor. The temporary nature of theseinterchangeable parts means you could pack in different

modules for different activities.

Project Ara's modular nature also means you can upgrade on your own schedule,which can benefit early adopters as well as people who hold onto their technologylonger. Ara could be cheaper in the long run if you keep the same body and onlyswap certain parts, or it could fast-track you to the latest and greatest processor orcamera if you're hot to get the next best thing as soon as it arrives.

When it's launching

Google announced in January that it'll launch a Project Ara pilot program in PuertoRico later in 2015, though we don't have exact dates, or even much of a time frame.Google has signed two carrier partners for the launch, Claro and Open Mobile.

Paul Eremenko, who heads Project Ara, said Puerto Rico is a good choice for itstremendous volume of Internet traffic on mobile phones: 75 percent. The countryalso has the right blend of smartphone and feature-phone owners, Eremenko said.

Who's involved

So far, Toshiba and Miami-based phone maker Yezz have publicly said they'rebuilding parts. Toshiba has developed two processors (PDF) for Ara phones andhas created a camera module for Project Ara. In this case, it's a 5-megapixel unit(see video below).

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10/12/2015 Project Ara: Everything we know about Google's modular phone CNET

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We have set engineering and manufacturing goals for the bill-of-materials cost

of a basic, entry-level Ara device to be in the $50-100 range. It's important to

note that this is just the cost of the components and says nothing about how it

will be priced--it could be more or less than that (e.g., with a carrier contract). In

the end, we expect that module developers will be able to set the prices for

their modules sold in the Ara Module Marketplace, much like mobile app

developers do in app stores today.

5Mpix Ara camera module Brought-up

For its part, Yezz has been tapped to create the modules themselves. That doesn'tmean the company is only making the housing; some modules will be more basic,while others will "have a little bit more of the imagination that modular architectureinspires." Yezz won't tell us much more than that for a few more weeks.

Yezz won't be the only company involved, but it will help create the 20 or 30modules that Google hopes to ready by the pilot launch.

Google is a major player, not just for running the show, but also because it'll ownthe online marketplace where owners of Project Ara phones can buy modules, ahuge revenue opportunity for the company if these mix-and-match phones take off.

How much an Ara phone will cost

The price tag on an Ara phone will depend on a lot of things, like how big it is andthe cost of the parts you choose. Also, carriers will have their own pricing if theysell you an Ara-phone package.

That said, Project Ara's FAQ does say this:

There is some concern that by the time you're done, the phone could wind upcosting more than a typical handset with the same specs, depending on carrierdeals and sales.

Potential drawbacks

Prototype devices don't always wind up looking like the finished product, but thereare already a few questions I have, especially when it comes to battery life andefficiency.

Ara's team has said that it's working on stretching the battery life of its Spiralprototype family to a full day, at least by the time of Project Ara's global rollout. Thebattery is just one other module, which is good (because you can supersize) andbad (because the batteries could be less efficient). Team Ara plans to handle this

10/12/2015 Project Ara: Everything we know about Google's modular phone CNET

http://www.cnet.com/news/projectaraeverythingweknowaboutgooglesmodularphone/ 4/9

challenge by letting you hot-swap a bunch of power supplies (like solar arrays andmini fuel cells in addition to your battery packs) without powering down yourdevice. The catch: for extra-long battery life you still have to buy those additionalmodules in the first place.

I also wonder if there will be any missteps in the way that components cooperatewhen you swap them out. Usually, a layer of software helps them communicate. IfAra phones run the basic Android software, there may not be a problem (phonestypically use parts made by a number of companies anyway). If the handset were touse a variation of Android, that could be a different story.

A spokesperson for Project Ara told CNET that the Module Developers Kit (MDK) isdesigned to communicate with both the Endoskeleton and any other insertedmodule. A forthcoming Ara Application Manager should handle the handoffbetween two modules that do roughly the same thing; two camera blocks, forinstance.

Then there's the question of compatibility. A weak processor and very high-endcamera won't go together. Some requirements or at least tips might help Ara usersavoid mishaps. The Google group hasn't figured this out yet, but plans to helpnudge customers to better combinations and steer clear of bad pairings.

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Tags: Mobile World Congress 2015, Phones, Google

With Ara, your phone is the puzzle.

Juan Garzón / CNET

Durability and waterproofing could also take a hit from the open, snap-on design. Inthe event that something does go wrong, you'd have to reach out to each modulemaker in particular, or swap out the broken part. There's less of a safety net with abroken Ara phone, but also potentially a faster resolution if you replace the partyourself, as with a bashed screen.

Project Ara says that with its pilot in Puerto Rico, Google will lean on "third-partylogistics partners" to help process issues like warranties and replacements.

Not for everyone

A concept in development, Project Ara's modular phones aren't meant to replaceyour conventional, all-in-one phone anytime soon. As with Android fans, Ara willappeal to tinkerers who like to control their specs and bonus hardware, not tothose who prefer simpler solutions.

When we'll know more

Phone maker Yezz will show off some of its modules at Mobile World Congress inBarcelona the first week in March. Other than that, we'll keep our ears and eyesopen for more support from hardware makers and from Google itself. We're alsohoping to see the Spiral 3 prototype that the team says is already under way.

Article updated at 3:35 p.m. PT with a quote from Yezz and at 5:30pm withcomment from Google's Project Ara. Updated on February 19 at 6:55am to correct"Exoskeleton" to "Endoskeleton".

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Top 5 Surprise Tech HitsOctober 12, 2015By Iyaz Akhtar /

10/12/2015 Can 'urban mining' solve the world's ewaste problem? Fortune

http://fortune.com/2014/06/26/blueoakurbanminingewaste/ 1/5

CONSUMER ELECTRONICS

Can 'urban mining' solvethe world's ewasteproblem?by Katherine Noyes @noyesk JUNE 26, 2014, 10:28 AM EDT

A worker sorts through stripped computer boards in Guiyu, China in 2008.

Jim Xu—Getty Images

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Backed by Kleiner Perkins, BlueOak Resources is making a$35 million bid to recover gold, silver, copper, and palladiumfrom landfills.

On a recent, rather stormy Tuesday afternoon, former U.S. vice president Al Gore and an

assortment of Silicon Valley executives assembled in an unlikely spot—Osceola, Arkansas—to break

ground on a promising new venture.

Backed by $35 million in financing, Californiabased startup BlueOak Resources is building a

brandnew facility in this city of 8,000 or so, but it’s not to manufacture a new hightech gadget.

Quite the opposite, in fact: BlueOak’s new operation will be what it calls the nation’s first “urban

mining” refinery dedicated to recovering valuable metals such as gold, silver, copper and palladium

from the growing mountains of ewaste currently threatening to overwhelm the planet.

“Every day, U.S. consumers dispose of enough cell phones to cover 50 football fields,” said Privahini

Bradoo, BlueOak’s chief executive.

Although between 7% and 10% of the world’s gold and 30% of the silver produced goes into

electronics, only 15% of the 50 million tons of ewaste created globally each year undergoes any

recycling, Bradoo said. Instead, the vast majority of devices are dumped in landfills or exported to

countries where ewaste is handpicked over open fires.

The city of Guiyu, China—widely considered the world’s ewaste capital—receives some 4,000 tons

of the stuff per hour. It also has the highestever recorded level of dioxins, and 90% of its residents

have neurological damage, Bradoo said. “Not only is it a humanitarian disaster, but when we

looked at the value contained in escrap, it was shocking,” she added.

With support from the Arkansas Teachers’ Retirement Fund, a consortium of European and

domestic investors, and the Arkansas Development Finance Authority, BlueOak’s new refinery will

process 15 million pounds of electronic scrap per year initially, rapidly expanding from there.

Production will begin by the end of 2015, bringing 50 technical jobs to the area. Kleiner Perkins

Caufield & Byers is one of BlueOak’s major investors.

10/12/2015 Can 'urban mining' solve the world's ewaste problem? Fortune

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‘For every ounce, 30 tons of waste’

“Developing a 21stcentury, highquality recovery process for the valuable materials in electronic

waste is very important,” said Allen Hershkowitz, senior scientist with the Natural Resources

Defense Council’s Urban Program.

Ewaste is the fastestgrowing component of the municipal solid waste stream, and given all the

precious metals, valuable plastics and recyclable glass electronics contain, “the fact that these are

being routinely discarded makes no sense,” Hershkowitz said.

Indeed, roughly 10 ounces of gold can be extracted from every ton of printed circuit boards, Bradoo

said; you’d need to process 100 tons of gold ore or more to get the same amount.

More to the point, “for every ounce of gold that has to be mined in the field, we produce 30 tons of

waste” including mercury and cyanide, Hershkowitz said. “Compare that with recovering an ounce

of gold from electronic waste—you’d eliminate that gigantic ecological burden.”

There are, of course, U.S. companies already out there that specialize in refurbishing and recycling

used electronics—Sims Recycling and ECS Refining are two larger examples. Typically, though,

such companies dismantle unrefurbishable devices either manually or with automated shredders to

recover their aluminum, steel and plastic but ship the circuit boards to smelters overseas, Bradoo

said.

It’s those circuit boards where most of the highvalue metals reside, she added. In order to reclaim

them in a sustainable way, BlueOak’s facility will take the boards, pulverize them further and put

them through a hightemperature plasmaarc furnace.

‘Value recovery from every part of that chain’

Europe has long been ahead of the United States in its ewaste solutions, thanks not just to

government mandates and an emphasis on recycling but also to infrastructure already in place

there.

10/12/2015 Can 'urban mining' solve the world's ewaste problem? Fortune

http://fortune.com/2014/06/26/blueoakurbanminingewaste/ 4/5

“They had domestic secondary smelters that had the capital and the capability to redirect some of

their capacity toward ewaste,” Bradoo said.

Even there, though, “there are no facilities we’re aware of that are dedicated to recovering precious

metals from electronic scrap,” she said.

Yet while BlueOak’s urban mining refinery may be “exactly the kind of facility that we need from an

ecological perspective,” some key economic realities will have to be overcome, NRDC’s Hershkowitz

said.

“The challenge here is going to be getting the electronic waste to the facility, because right now only

a fraction of electronic waste is effectively recovered for recycling,” he added. “From an economic

perspective, we need government requirements, as they have in Europe, that obligate the consumer

products companies to participate in funding the infrastructure to recover these materials for

recycling or refurbishment.”

Initially, BlueOak will rely on suppliers that are already collecting and dismantling ewaste, but

“our hope is that by creating more value in that value chain, that will promote the frontend

recycling,” Bradoo said.

The automotive industry is an inspiring model, she noted, with a recycling rate of about 95%.

“That’s because you have value recovery from every part of that value chain,” she said. “An entire

industry has focused on ensuring that there’s recycling.”

Alternatively, much the way depositrefund systems have been used successfully to encourage

container recycling, it’s possible a similar scheme could be applied to electronics, she said.

Either way, “we want the entire value chain to grow and to create an ecosystem that supports the

overall recycling and recovery of as much value as possible from electronics so we don’t think of it

as a waste stream,” Bradoo explained.

‘We need to see real leadership’

Approaches like BlueOak’s urban mining refinery “have the potential to be an important part of the

10/12/2015 Can 'urban mining' solve the world's ewaste problem? Fortune

http://fortune.com/2014/06/26/blueoakurbanminingewaste/ 5/5

Licensing

Approaches like BlueOak’s urban mining refinery “have the potential to be an important part of the

solution, to recycle the materials embedded in these devices, reducing the demand for virgin

materials and the energy needed to produce them,” said Gary Cook, a senior IT analyst with

Greenpeace.

Greenpeace also wants to see more robust efforts from the electronics sector, Cook said, such

as stronger takeback programs and a commitment to using recycled materials in electronics

products.

But it starts at the top. “What we also need to see is real leadership from electronics manufacturers

in creating products that are designed to have a longer life,” Cook said, citing the example of

modular mobile phones such as Phonebloks and Project Ara, “and not designed for the dump in

two to three years.”

Comments

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SMARTER PHONECLEVER’S prototype modular design would enablefailed components to be replaced, extending theuseful life of the phone.

Credit: Loughborough University

Picking Up On Phone Waste

Each cell phone contains 40 chemicalelements, including 300 mg of silver, 30 mgof gold, and hazardous elements such as leadand mercury.

Only 27 of these elements areeconomically recoverable.

Gold concentration in a phone is 50times as great as it is in ore in a mine.

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Volume 92 Issue 35 | pp. 3033Issue Date: September 1, 2014

Dialing Back On Cell Phone WasteAcademics and technology firms seek to reduce the growing problem of electronic waste from old cellphones

By Alex Scott

Department: BusinessKeywords: cell phone, ewaste, recycling, gold, silver

More than 1.8 billion new cell phones will be bought in 2014, but within just afew years, 44% of them will end up “hibernating” in drawers. About the sameshare will be resold and passed on, and 4% will end up in landfills. Only 3%will be recycled.

Those dispiriting statistics come from Hywel Jones, a materials scientist at England’s Sheffield Hallam University who sees major environmental andresource implications in the lack of phone recycling. Each phone containsabout 300 mg of silver and 30 mg of gold. Just the gold and silver used tomanufacture the phones sold this year are worth more than $2.5 billion.

Of the 40 elements in a phone, only 17 are ever recovered to a maximumrate of 95%, even in the most sophisticated electronics recycling plants suchas the huge smelting and electrolysis facility run by Umicore in Antwerp,Belgium. In developing countries, where manual disassembly of electronicsoften takes place, the recovery rate is far lower and comes with the added riskof exposure to hazardous chemicals, including heavy metals and strong acids.

In a bid to head off this growing problem, private technology firms aredeveloping systems to make phone recycling easier, cheaper, and lesshazardous. Academics, meanwhile, are hoping that designs for extending theuseful life of phones—such as modular phones featuring replaceablecomponents and “skins” that look better with age—can prevent them from being left in drawers in the first place.

But market watchers are doubtful about the viability of some of the emerging approaches, which can seem rather fanciful. “A lotof crazy ‘revolutionary’ and ‘groundbreaking’ technologies are actually just chasing loose money, which is typical in spaceswhere large government and corporate initiatives are fueling the fire,” says Mark Bünger, research director at Lux Research, afirm that analyzes emerging technologies.

Ensuring that materials from cell phones are recycled is a complex problem that requires solutions from a number of disciplines,according to David Peck, assistant professor of industrial design engineering at Delft University of Technology in theNetherlands. “Real opportunities to solve the problem will lie in cooperation among chemists, engineers, designers, and thebusiness community,” he says.

Closed Loop Emotionally Valuable Ewaste Recovery, anEnglandbased project set up to solve the issue of recovering waste fromcell phones, features such a cooperation, drawing in experts from severaluniversities. CLEVER proposes a phone that “ages gracefully” andcontains a circuit board that can be dissolved easily to recover valuablemetals.

CLEVER’s prototype phone is based on a “skeleton” to whichcomponents such as battery, screen, motherboard, and memory—the“organs”—can be attached and readily replaced if they fail, explainsJanet L. Scott, training director for the Centre for Sustainable ChemicalTechnologies at England’s University of Bath and principal investigator ofthe CLEVER project.

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Credit: Shutterstock

Only 3% of the 1.8 billion phonesexpected to be purchased around the worldthis year will be recycled.

Americans have more than 200 millionold phones “hibernating” in their homes.

Smelting coupled with electrolysis is thedominant recycling approach in the West;processes based on strong acids are used inmany developing countries.

Electronics in landfills contain morerareearth metals than are in all known globalreserves.

Less than 1% of rareearth metals arecurrently recycled.

SOURCE: Environmental Protection Agency

The Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council, a U.K.government agency, has provided $2.1 million in funding for the project,which began in 2013 and is set to end in 2016.

The researchers with CLEVER at Loughborough University areinvestigating the reasons consumers become emotionally attached toelectronic devices, how that attachment can be extended to prolong thelife of a phone, and how to provide the impetus for returning the devicefor recycling. CLEVER investigators at Newcastle University, also inEngland, are experimenting with materials for the “skin” of the phone that,like leather, look better with age.

Scott, meanwhile, is developing cellulosic materials for the phone’sskeleton and circuit boards. Her team is currently evaluating novel blendsof flame retardants, hydrophobizing agents, and lowdielectricconstantfillers to be used with cellulose in phones.

When the time comes to recycle the phone, enzymes developed forcellulosic ethanol production could convert the phone’s cellulose intosugars. “We don’t need to reinvent the wheel,” Scott says.

CLEVER’s approach addresses the phone recycling industry’s need toseparate plastics from metals for reuse. “The plastics are probably moreof a challenge than the metals in separating and processing to achieve asuitable raw material,” says Rose Read, manager of MobileMuster, aproduct stewardship program set up by the Australian MobileTelecommunications Association. Currently, plastics from recycledphones in Australia are mixed and typically end up being “downcycled” toproducts such as fence posts.

For the recovery of metals, Scott and her coworkers plan to evaluateselective metal recovery strategies including ones involving selectivedissolution in ionic liquids and recovery, for example, by electroplating, inwhich an electrical current is used to reduce dissolved metal cations suchthat they “plate out” as pure metal on an electrode.

The modular phone approach doesn’t have a good track record so far. In2007, an Israeli startup called Modu introduced a smartphone that fit intoelectronic jackets to become devices such as cameras or music players.The company folded shortly after product launch. Critics said theproprietary hardware was too clunky and the number of modules toolimited.

But Modu’s intellectual property was later acquired by Google. Thesearch giant plans to introduce a prototype modular phone in 2015.Apple and ZTE, China’s largest cell phone manufacturer, also areunderstood to be developing modular phones.

Dubbed Project Ara, Google’s planned modular phone features analuminum frame with eight rear slots for modules and two front slots forfeatures such as a keyboard or data transmission. Unlike Modu’s clunkyinterface, Google’s prototype features sleek wireless electropermanentmagnets to keep the modules in place.

Google plans to encourage “hundreds of thousands of developers” to make the modules. A Google partner, Newton, Mass.based NK Labs, is developing an initial range of modules for the phone, including an oximeter for measuring blood oxygenlevels and imaging lenses for night photography. Future uses for the Project Ara phone could be in medical diagnostics andenvironmental sensing.

In addition to the move to design a more sustainable phone, there is a flurry of activity to develop more efficient and lessenvironmentally harmful processes for recovering materials from old phones. Today, recovery of metals from phones typically isbased on largescale smelting and electrolysis. In developing countries, a nitrohydrochloric acid solution known as aqua regiais often used to recover gold.

The European Union’s Associated European Research & Technology Organisations (AERTOs) project,which features sixtechnology firms and ended earlier this year, has developed a multistep process for recovering materials from old phones thatavoids smelting and aqua regia.

In the AERTOs process, old phones are dismantled to obtain the printed circuit boards, which are crushed and sieved. Plasticsand metals are then separated in water by a process known as flotation, in which bubbles carry hydrophobic plastic particles tothe surface to be mechanically skimmed, leaving metals such as copper to be selectively leached and recovered withhydrometallurgical methods.

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[+]Enlarge

CLOSING THE LOOPEntegris claims its eVOLV process can reduce phone recycling costs by 30–40% with no emissions or discharge of effluent.

Credit: Entegris

Gold is leached from the residual solids using the chloridehypochlorite process and then filtered in mycelium mushroom mats.This socalled biomining approach recovers up to 80% of the gold.

“The reason why mycelium biomass is very good at capturing gold from solutions is due to charged groups of biomass, whichare especially selective for gold,” says Jarno Mäkinen, research scientist at the Finnish technology institute VTT and a memberof the AERTOs team. “When the biosorption filter is full, gold can be recovered by releaching or incinerating the biomass.”

Although VTT’s approach falls short of the 95% gold recovery rate attained in some smelting plants, the technology works atambient temperature. Umicore’s Antwerp facility, in contrast, runs at more than 2,000 °F. VTT’s approach also avoids smeltingfacilities’ gaseous emissions, Mäkinen says. “The approach could especially be applied in developing countries where smeltinginvestments and operating are problematic,” Mäkinen says. VTT is now scaling up its experiments to pilot scale.

Other firms, including Californiabased BlueOak Resources and Arizona’s Universal Bio Mining, are also developing novelbioprocesses for recovering metals from phones and other electronic waste.

But Billerica, Mass.based Entegris, a $700 millionperyear provider of materials to the electronics industry, claims to havedeveloped a closedloop, acidbased process called eVOLV that can recover 98% of precious metals in electronic waste atambient temperature and at costs 30–40% lower than smelting. Entegris says the metals it can recover make up more than 99%of the metals in electronics by volume.

“To date, we have agreed to license our technology to four customers, including two in Asia, which plan to begin operating thefirst eVOLV plants in 2015,” says Michael B. Korzenski, the venture’s vice president and general manager.

In the eVOLV process, motherboards from electronic waste are cleaned. Components such as silicon chips are separated, whilelead, tin, and silver solder are removed in an acidbased solution.

The reusable solution is 70% water and contains no solvents, surfactants, cyanide, or aqua regia, according to Entegris. “Ourprocess is cradletocradle where 1 lb of waste in translates to 1 lb of sellable product out, with zero waste generation,”Korzenski says.

Metals are recovered either in pure form or as metal oxide powders, and the silicon chips are sold for reuse or recycled. In aseparate step, precious metals, including gold, are removed selectively in solution. All wastewater in the process is recycled.Circuit boards are sold for their copper, iron, or aluminum content.

The eVOLV process can start small and then be scaled up by adding more modules. “You can locate it next to where the wasteis being created,” Korzenski says.

In contrast, the largest smelting plants are so big that only five are in operation around the world, typically processing electronic

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waste in multiton batches. In Japan, China, and the U.S., which don’t have such smelters, interest in eVOLV “is goinggangbusters,” Korzenski says.

But not all of the new technologies will be viable, Lux’s Bünger cautions. “Certainly technologies are emerging, but a lot—including biomining—may never work out economically,” he predicts.

Indeed, whatever potential the emerging technologies might have, traditional smelting firms, such as Umicore, don’t seem tooconcerned about them. The Belgian company has applied for permission to expand its Antwerp recycling plant by 40% at a costof more than $100 million to a processing capacity of 500,000 tons per year.

Traditional and emerging recyclers may not see eye to eye on most matters, but they can agree on one thing: There are enoughold phones for all comers to recycle—if they can just get them out of the kitchen drawer.

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