Watch out

That Red Alert On Used Computers By Ojeladun Taiwo A.

There was a disturbing article in The Guardian of November 28, 2005. It was titled "Red alert on used computers, electronic devices," and written by Sonny Aragba-Akpore. The article brought the spotlight on the problem of used electronics being dumped in Nigeria. It highlighted a report written by the Seattle-based hazardous waste watchdog, the Basel Action Network (BAN), which sent a team to Nigeria to assess the problem. The report, titled, "The Digital Dump: Exporting Re-Use and Abuse to Africa," should be of interest to every Nigerian.
The picture painted by the report is horrifyingly grotesque and the report has been highlighted by several media outlets in the United States including The New York Times, The Washington Post, National Geographic News, and Baltimore Sun. Each month, hundreds of thousands of used computers, televisions and other electronic components - about 500 container loads - arrive in Nigeria. One container may contain 500 computers. Of these, half are unusable and immediately end up in landfills. BAN's executive Director Jim Puckett says, "There's an amazing expertise in repair, but so much of what's coming in is worthless that it is just dumped."
The internationally accepted environmentally sound solution to used electronics is recycling. But unlike the EU and Japan, the US has no clear rules on recycling obsolete electronic equipment and no regulations to prevent the kinds of export we are talking about. According to reports, the US is the only developed country that has not ratified the Basel Convention, an international treaty on trade in hazardous waste. In order to avoid the huge cost of recycling of the more than 63 million computers that would become obsolete in the US by the end of this year, those Puckett calls "waste cowboys acting as e-scrap brokers" will package these and ship them off to India and China where there are inexpensive and environmentally unsound methods of recycling, and to Nigeria where too many of them will be thrashed. Nigeria has zero electronics recycling facilities and the equipment sent to Nigeria and end up being thrashed are sent under the guise of recycling or reuse. To put it all more clearly, the "waste cowboys" pick up thrashed equipment, package them together with tested working equipment meant for commercial resale and send these to Nigeria.
The environmental and health impact of these can only be conjectured. The BAN found that much of the junked equipment is adding to the considerable hazardous waste problems of a country that lacks facilities to properly handle it. It took photographs showing enormous open dumps of junked electronics along roadsides in residential neighbourhoods, sometimes set ablaze to reduce bulk, with children wondering near them. According to experts, intact computer and other electronic equipment pose zero health hazards, but when computer and television screens, circuit boards, batteries, and other high-tech electronics are broken up or degraded or burned, they release toxic substances. These include cadmium, barium, mercury and chromium. An average computer monitor contains as much as eight pound of lead along with plastic components that contain brominated flame retardants. These can accumulate in human blood and fat tissue and can disrupt the body's hormonal balance. When burned some of these plastics release dioxins and furans which are culprits in cancer as well as a host of other health problems.
If you think the dumping of used computers here is bad enough, there is another dimension, more insidious, to the problem. The other day I was at a technician's shop to try to fix a monitor at Ikeja in Lagos. A fellow came around and had cause to advise the technician to dump my monitor. "How you go dey waste your time repair new monitor? New monitors no good. If you buy monitor today, you go use am for three months before i spoil. Na fairly use come better pass new thing. China dey do mass production. Wetin dem go use do one dem go use am do hundred." Shortly after, looking at the heap of thrashed monitors near the shop, another fellow said, "China no be hooman been. See! See! See!"
Listening to these technicians, you see the problem clearly. We have been reduced to preferring the pestilential items from America over new products! This is a tragedy. It would appear that Asians make good things and ship them to the West where there are strict standards, and make bad things and ship them here where nobody can care less. This problem goes beyond computers. Around here one is always buying electric sockets that don't fit or work for a few days and get burnt.
However, the problem also goes beyond Asians. The reason the Chinese and Taiwanese ship substandard electronics here is us. It is not because they dislike the spelling of Nigeria or they despise our faces. The other day, as I was discussing the problem with a friend, he put his finger right on it. He said earlier this year he got in touch with a firm in Asia to send him some USB phones and they asked him to give them specifications. Lost, he asked them what they meant. He then told them to send him the best ones. He was later to learn that Nigerian businessmen tell the Asian firms to make these cheap things. When they are brought here, we buy them happily because we can afford them. That is why the middlemen ask for cheap specifications - because more people can afford them and they want to reap good profits. But most of them don't work well. Of course, these cut-throat businessmen and their Asian partners-in-crime harm the public. Unfortunately, the federal standards agency, the SON, justifies its existence entirely by paying salary to its staff every month.
Perhaps the greatest challenge about the environmental disaster brewing around Nigeria is the complete lack of awareness. Minimum global standards are unheard of around here so people ordinarily see nothing wrong with the use of cellophane wrappers in the night markets, and very few of the upmarket supermarkets and fast food outlets have adopted paper wrappers. We dump refuse in the rivers. We see nothing wrong with electronics being dumped in our neighbourhoods and then set ablaze. We are perfectly at home with any contraption called a generator spewing horrible fumes in the effort to generate some badly-needed energy.
Global warming, ozone depletion and the like would sound like ancient Greek to too many of us. Even desert encroachment and ocean surge we fail to associate with our practices. So we deliberately set fire to the bush. And no thanks to NEPA's arbitrary billing system, we make no efforts to conserve electricity when we could. In other climes, some people put the environment into consideration when deciding which car to buy. The last time someone tried to bring some sanity to bear on the importation of used cars into this country people yelled blue murder, as if cars were bread.
It is not surprising then that the alarm on used computers was raised by a foreign-based group and has not generated much ink from local opinion writers in the media and listserves. The article in The Guardian says, "Curiously, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has reportedly conceded that there were indeed inappropriate practices in the industry but did not think that the immediate solution was to stop the export of the equipment." So what is the immediate solution? They don't know. But then we are talking about the US EPA, not the Nigeria EPA. The Federal Government has reportedly issued policy statements on the importation of used computers into the country.
To be sure, I am drafting this write-up on my home computer which I purchased "fairly used". Should someone place a total ban on importation of used computers, people are bound to yell like they did in the case of cars when even many of those who welcomed the idea felt the ceiling was too high. But Technology Times editor Shina Badaru is of the view that the only way to curb "digital dump" is local manufacture of computers.
But before then...?