Outsourcing Harm: Battery Recycling Goes South
A New York State law that forbids discarding rechargeable batteries with household waste took effect this week. The law also requires any retailer that sells rechargeables (as part of a device or as a stand-alone) weighing less than 25 pounds to accept them without a fee for recycling. Many large chains (RadioShack, Staples) have done this for years, but now that it’s codified in New York, we need to look more closely at where those batteries will be going after we drop them off.
Today’s New York Times reports on lead batteries exported from U.S. recycling companies for processing in Mexican plants, around which lead levels in the air and soil are many times higher than U.S. standards allow. Released as dust when batteries are broken or in emissions when the metal is smelted, lead is linked with high blood pressure, kidney damage, and abdominal pain in adults. In children, lead impairs neurological development and lowers IQs.
Recycling batteries and electronic waste in the U.S. is highly regulated and therefore expensive. That's why a lot of this stuff gets bundled up and shipped for recycling to developing nations that have less stringent (and less enforced) environmental and health regulations. According to Perry Gottesfeld ofOccupational Knowledege International, a San Francisco-based nonprofit that works to reduce exposure to industrial pollutants, the adoption of tighter lead air standards in the U.S. last year lead to a more than doubling of American exports of batteries to Mexico, which lacks the regulatory capacity and technology to recycle them safely.
An OK International report from June 2011 suggests that, among other things, the U.S. government "pressure the Mexican government to regulate the lead battery recycling industry with standards equivalent to those in the U.S." (To learn more about the impacts of American exports of hazardous wastes to the developing world, visit the website of the Basel Action Network.)
This story is a reminder that regulations often have unintended social and economic consequences for others out of sight and mind. We want to recycle our plastics, but many of them make their way from curbside collection to developing nations, where they may be burned without emissions controls. Closer to home, communities that charge residents for proper disposal of their household trash or ban certain types of waste from their landfills must find ways to cope with illegal roadside dumping or burning. (Still, "pay as you throw" is generally considered a good way to cut the volume of household waste.) Ban just about anything from a landfill without a convenient and affordable waste-diversion program (and enforcement) in place, and you may end up with something like this 250,000-tire pile in South Carolina, where landfilling tires is forbidden and consumers pay a $2-per-tire recycling fee.
Top image: Courtesy National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
Bottom photo: Kevin Dooley/Flickr
OnEarth contributing editor Elizabeth Royte also writes for the New York Times Book Review, which called her "no stranger to the pleasures and perils of chasing errant pieces of plastic and other castoffs to surprising (and often disgusting) places."
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