Green Group pushes sustainable solutions to E-Waste challenge

MANILA, Jan. 24 – The EcoWaste Coalition has called upon government regulators to act with urgency to avert a full-blown, chemically-induced health crisis due to the improper disposal and recycling of toxic electronic waste.

In a letter sent last Friday to the Department of Environment and Natural Resources–Environmental Management Bureau (DENR-EMB) and the National Solid Waste Management Commission (NSWMC), the EcoWaste Coalition alerted the agencies on the unchecked disposal of electronic waste in the municipal waste stream.

Discarded electrical and electronic devices, the EcoWaste Coalition pointed out, contain several hundred components, including many toxic and hazardous chemicals like beryllium, cadmium, lead, mercury, brominated flame retardants and polychlorinated biphenyls and should not be combined with regular waste.

Under R.A. 9003 or the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act, household hazardous discards such as consumer electronics (cell phones, computers etc.), white goods (stoves, refrigerators, air-conditioners, TVs etc.) and batteries are classified as “special waste” that should be handled separately from other residential and commercial wastes.

"To address the brewing crisis, we request the DENR and the NSWMC to initiate a participatory process that will look at electronic and electrical products throughout their life cycle, from manufacture to disposal, and craft sustainable solutions towards chemical safety and environmental health," said Manny Calonzo, president of the EcoWaste Coalition.

“We further urge the agencies to look into the importation of near-end-of-life electrical and electronic products commonly sold in so-called surplus stores. With only a short period of usefulness remaining in these products, they quickly end up in disposal sites, ultimately adding to the growing volume of e-waste in the country,” he added.

In their letter to the DENR and the NSWMC, the group listed possible measures that can help in dealing with the e-waste problem.

These measures include the mandatory waste segregation at source, public information on the risks and hazards of e-waste disposal and recycling, the phase out of harmful substances in electrical and electronic products, the implementation of extended producer responsibility and the imposition of stricter rules to prevent the dumping of near-end-of-life and end-of-life electrical and electronic products in the country.

The EcoWaste Coalition in a recent dumpsite investigation found waste reclaimers foraging mixed garbage to retrieve valuable recyclable materials from end-of-life linear and compact fluorescent lamps, computer circuit boards and other discarded electrical and electronic items, oblivious to the chemical risks and hazards they posed.

“Our investigation confirms the apparent lack of regulation and system that will curb the improper disposal of e-waste and the perilous recycling taking place in dumpsites and junkshops,” said Thony Dizon, Coordinator of the EcoWaste Coalition’s Project PROTECT (People Responding and Organizing against Toxic Chemical Threats).

“These toxic and hazardous chemicals in e-waste endanger the health of informal recyclers and the people around them as well as contaminate the environment with toxic pollutants,” Dizon added.

“We are primarily worried about the exposure of children and pregnant and lactating women to heavy metals such as cadmium, lead and mercury in the crude recycling of e-waste, as heavy metals are extremely toxic even at low levels of exposure,” he emphasized. (PNA)

LDV/PR/jsd

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