A Pinoy Blog About Nothing

Happy Earth Day, you resource-hogging humans. I’m sure there’s a ton of reuse, recycle, reduce retread articles and posts out there. I’d like to point out about one other problem facing the Philippines and other developing countries.

While researching on a project, I discovered a dark secret by some organizations that solicit your used electronics. Some companies profit by purporting to “recycle” and then dumping it on countries like the Philippines:

According to the Basel Action Network, there are 500 40-foot containers of used electronics and computers are being shipped from U.S. and Europe to Lagos, Nigeria, each month. There are also large volumes of used electronics being sent to other developing countries such as China, India, Pakistan, the Philippines, Cambodia, and the Ivory Coast.

The vast majority of items in these shipments are NOT reused, recycled, or bridging the digital divide, because most of them are unusable. In Lagos, local officials estimate that 80% of these electronics items are thrown away immediately upon arrival.

Due to poverty and lack of environmental regulation and enforcement, these unusable electronics, which contain very toxic materials, are thrown in the swamp by local people or burned in open piles. This causes contamination of water and soil in the area and major health problems for the local population, including cancer and birth defects.

Developing countries like the Philippines are having problems dealing with its own waste (see: garbage dumps and communities living on them) how does it expect to deal with hi-tech waste? It needn’t go far — Japan is poised to take a dump on the Philippines.

So yeah, reduce, reuse, recycle. But also keep an eye out for other countries using the Philippines as its garbage can. Oh and do a little homework when donating used electronics to a “recyclist” — you’ll never know where it’ll end up.