Non-RoHS Compliant Cell Phones May Be "Dumped" In China, Latin America, and US
by John Laumer, Philadelphia on 01.16.07
This is a good news-bad news post. The headline is obviously the bad news. From Tierramérica (a cool site for green policy wonks) we learn from Stephen Leahy that "Cellular telephones that contain toxic chemicals are still being sold in Latin America and other developing regions. But thanks to strict European regulations, there are progressively fewer phones being made with cadmium, lead and other dangerous materials." Sorting out the compliaint ones is difficult because "A mobile phone can contain 500 to 1,000 components. Many of these contain toxic heavy metals such as lead, mercury, cadmium and beryllium, and hazardous chemicals, such as brominated flame retardants (BFR)..."As a result of RoHS, a number of mobiles can no longer be sold in the EU," said Alhajj [with GreenPeace]. "Those phones are going to be sold in China, the USA and Latin America."" Is the USA, then, in the same class as "developing" nations when it comes to product end of life management? Not entirely, as a Michigan USA business has found their opening in the world of cell phone re-use throughout the Americas, with or without government directive: "Potentially, tens of millions of old phones will be collected and sent to a company in the U.S. state of Michigan called ReCellular Inc., which sorts, erases all data contained in the phones' electronic chips, cleans, tests and re-sells them". That's the good news. Image credit: this site.
A great way to encourage phone recycling on a large scale is to publicize the identity theft issues surrounding discarded phones. The end consumer cannot really erase the info in a cell phone before discarding it. It requires specialized equipment. If people are encouraged to return their phone to their reputable retailer or service provider, the chances of the phone getting properly recycled get better.
Also, many older phones emit far more radiation than the newest models. Publicizing this might also encourage fewer toxic phones out there.
Is RoHS really good for the environment? There is a large group of engineers that believe that the alternative metals being used in place of the banned materials are even worse. visit: www.rohsusa.com and learn a little.
=== author's response follows ====
Thanks. A certain amount of skepticism shows an open curious mind at work. I did have a look.
Here's my first impression. Yes, as you say, there are probably added energy losses that stem from switching away from lead solders. However, energy efficiency of the PCB is controlled by design parameters of the entire device (more than just the PCB) and it's material specs, the solder being only one aspect. Hence, I see this in the context of larger trands. Specifically, the total mass of solder per device is clearly going down commensurate with device miniaturization. I'd need to comprehend the import of miniaturization and network storage trends before the life cycle results would have much meaning for me.
Finally, I'd point out that the EU does not landfill much raw solid waste. That which is not recycled gets incinerated. Lead bungs up the recycling works and lead gets emitted by incinerators - a serious human exposure issue. Neither of these situations apply to the US, where we landfill most everything and have almost no municipal incinerators left. Moreover, we in the US do not require product end of life take back and recycling. I believe it is only a matter of time before we follow the European model on product end of life management. As for incineration, however, that will not be coming our way soon. In fact the EU is likely to move away from so much incineration, in part because of the greenhouse gas emission burden associated with it. Hope this info helps.