Bob Rapp

Managing technowaste
As materials scientists, we think about maximizing strength, toughness, ductility, corrosion resistance... As materials engineers, we weigh up the trade-offs. Maximize strength, but at what loss in ductility? Maximize toughness, but at what loss in strength? Maximize corrosion resistance, but at what material cost? We worry about processing, labor costs, unit and lot production costs, tooling and energy costs. We are good at this and have made a vast array of useful products that are the foundation of our technological way of life. But what happens when we are done with these products? We have automobiles that we drive, then trade in, sell, or wreck. A cell phone is obsolete after two years. PCs are the same. Without plans to recycle, reuse, or renew, our skill at making things will ultimately bury us in high-tech junk. A recent CBS story reported that, by 2005, at least 200 million cell phones will be in use across the US. Another half a billion may be waiting to be thrown away. At the current pace, phones, batteries, and chargers will add up to 65 000 tons of high-value waste per year. The volume of waste is one thing, but the environmental hazard is the invisible problem. Cell phones contain many nasty substances including leaded solders, brominated fire retardants in the plastic, and Ni and Cd in the batteries. These substances need to be kept out of our water supplies. The situation with PCs is similar. In a recent report to the Environmental Protection Agency, Global Futures Foundation estimated that 6000 PCs per day go to waste in California. An estimated 300 000 tons of electronic waste ended up in US landfills in 2000. PCs also contain significant quantities of toxic materials. For example, the average PC or TV monitor contains ~2-4 kg of Pb. (Monitor glass contains ~20% Pb by weight.) In fact, ~70% of the heavy metals (plus Mg and Cd) found in landfills come from discarded electronics. These hazardous substances can contaminate groundwater and pose other environmental and public health risks. The electronic waste stream pales in comparison to that for end-oflife automobiles. In the early 1990s, the European Union (EU) was handling 2 million tons per year of scrapped automobiles, not including abandoned cars. This waste stream is particularly nasty, including motor oil, hydraulic fluid, a range of heavy metals, and hazardous organics including PCBs. The management strategies for handling technowaste are based in part on governmental regulation. The EUs End-of-Life Vehicle Directive mandates that 85% by weight of every car must be recycled or reused by 2006. This threshold increases to 95% in 2015. Similar legislation for the Waste of Electronic and Electrical Equipment and the Restriction of Hazardous Substances directives will impact disposal of electronic waste in the EU over the next several years. There is no equivalent legislation at the Federal level in the US, but California has enacted laws to collect and recycle electronic waste. Under this legislation, retailers will collect a waste recycling fee of $6 to $10 per product. While such dispersal fees or deposits may tip the economic scales to encourage recycling, large-scale efforts can only be sustained in a market economy if they are profitable. Materials science and engineering can play a decisive role. To reduce the cost of recycling processes, separation technologies are needed. An understanding of material properties is key in these approaches. Similarly, we need to be able to decontaminate recycled materials streams effectively. Materials selection, designing for disassembly, and reduction in the number of materials used in fabrication pose interesting challenges. The replacement of toxic substances continues to drive materials research and development. Sometimes their replacement by a more innocuous substance can lead to savings. Even the classic objectives of better, stronger, faster can have a role in leading to a product with a longer useful life, which would lower the recycling burden. Taken together, these issues form an important component of environmentally conscious manufacturing, which must move closer to the center of our thinking to sustain continued technological and economic advancement in a growing global economy.

This column was drafted by my colleague Rudolph G. Buchheit at The Ohio State University.
Bob Rapp, rapp.4@osu.edu

December 2004

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