I know I’ve written about the importance of recycling high tech items from a standpoint of the scarcity of elements. So I’ll try not to repeat myself too much in discussing the very real problem of e-waste in general.

E-waste is very quickly becoming a global nightmare. Here’s a number to boggle the mind: Did you know that world wide we are throwing out 20-50 million tons of electronics every year? And those numbers grow by at least three to five percent every year.

According to Greenpeace, e-waste is especially rough on children: “Many of the chemicals released are highly toxic, some may affect children’s developing reproductive systems, while others can affect brain development and the nervous system. In Ghana, China and India, workers, many of them children, may be substantially exposed to these hazardous chemicals.” says Dr. Kevin Bridgen.

E-waste. Not cool. Leave the kids out of it.

Scientists and activists have found toxicity levels so high I have to wear rubber gloves just to type about them. I’m talking about toxic metals, including lead (in quantities as much as one hundred times above background levels), phthalates (some of which are known to interfere with sexual reproduction), and high levels of chlorinated dioxins (known to promote cancer).

What’s happening is companies are illegally shipping their e-waste to places where they can get away with building giant, infanticidal mountains of garbage, like Ghana and China, despite global laws making it illegal to import electronics. People there more or less tolerate the garbage because they can occasionally pull some working tech out of it. A kind of strange black market has even developed in China where people are pulling parts out of this garbage and extracting any valuable elements such as copper and gold. But their methods are often more detrimental to the environment than just leaving the waste in a hole. Many people are simply burning the plastic away to extract the precious metals or using acids that produce highly dangerous and often flammable fumes. Worse, since there is no government enforcement of safety standards and often inadequate equipment, people are actually dying needlessly. Not to mention the toxic runoff being diverted to rivers and inevitably reaching the water supply.

So I’m sure you’re imagining “Corporate America” springing to their feet in unison, vowing to end all this pointless polluting. And you’d be completely wrong. (And now I’m imagining you, out of breath, exhausted by pushing that “pull” door for the last 45 minutes.) In fact, a few companies insist that they have absolutely no culpability for recycling their products, despite an obsolescence rate of like 18 freaking months. (Just made that up off the top of my head, sounds right though. Right?)

(Now I’m imagining that really evil CEO from Robocop, the one that get shot at the end? [Oops: Spoiler alert!] Seriously, this is scumbaggery on a truly epic scale.)

“But Chris,” you say, “Truly, there must be some ray of light in all of this poisonous darkness.”

Aww. Bless your little heart. (Seriously, it’s tiny. Get that looked at. I worry. And yes I do have x-ray vision. Our microwave at home didn’t have a door.)

The good news is, unfortunately, mixed with some bad news. Not surprisingly, we in the United States generate the most e-waste, somewhere along the lines of 3,000,000 tons a year. The good news is an industry is emerging that is recycling these parts either for use in other electronics or breaking them down to their raw materials, and safely disposing of all that lead, mercury and yttrium. (Oh yttrium, how on earth do you not set off spell check?)

And some companies are organizing buyback campaigns so they can harvest all those helpful resources, which is favorable to their bottom lines. There are also laws being enacted here and in Europe that ban the use of the most hazardous materials used in the manufacturing of these products, which may drive up prices and, with any luck, drive down demand and slow down upgrades.

I mean come on people. You were using the same computer for six years back in 1997, but now we’re dumping them after only two! We’re all fans of gadgetry, but lets think about where all of our old stuff goes before replacing it with something shinier. As we always say, with recycling, everybody wins.