Each time you change your phone, tablet or laptop without teaching the old device in an authorized center, it may enter the informal circuit and end thousands of kilometers away, illegally burned in an improvised oven from a Thai village, where inhabitants live from agriculture and breathe toxic vapors. While the circular economy remains a slogan, Romania generates over 100,000 tons of E-Waste a year, and lack of traceability, false labels and chase after rare metals transforms a seemingly trivial choice into a real risk: we pay digital comfort with the health of others.
Photo source: pixabay
After China forbade the imports of E-Waste, Southeast Asia became the epicenter of a global trading of electronic waste labeled. Specifically, Thailand has become one of the main global destinations for illegally exported electronic waste, the latest BBC report. Despared devices, from phones and laptops to motherboards, arrive in fake containers as “second-hand”, are disassembled in unauthorized and burnt installations for the recovery of rare metals, with huge costs for the environment and the health of the rural communities.
Romania produces over 100,000 tons of E-Waste annually
Currently, Thailand is facing an increase of twice more times of E-Waste imports in the last decade. Although the country has officially banned these imports in 2020, containers continue to arrive, often labeled as “used products for resale”.
What makes electronic waste recycling attractive in Thailand is not only the lack of strict regulation, but also the profit margin. Tens or hundreds of kilograms of copper can be extracted from a ton of motherboards and, in much smaller quantities, grams of gold, silver or other rare metals. These are then sold at competitive prices on Asian markets, especially in China. However, the real price of this economic model is outsourced: soils contaminated with heavy metals, toxic waters infiltrated in agricultural crops, inhabitants exposed to lead or mercury vapors. In many cases, the melting is done in improvised ovens, without protective filters or industrial ventilation.
“Thailand does not get anything from these operations, only ecological disaster and threats to public health”explained Akanat Promphan, the Thai Minister of Industry, for the BBC. Under its leadership, the government has formed a special intervention team and prepares a new legislation that is responsible for the producers and eliminates illegal import routes.
“Many of us believe that an old phone forgotten in a drawer or scrap iron does not have to reach the other end of the world, but the reality is different: Romania produces over 100,000 tons of electronic waste, and only a small part reaches authorized centers. Thailand. There, the devices are illegally disassembled, in improvised installations that pollute the air, land and water of rural communities, where people live in agriculture and suffer from toxic vapors released by burnt or melted components.“, Florin Niculae, operational director of the Redeee Workshop within the Workshop Association without borders, told Adevărul.
In the workshop he leads, Florin Niculae says that his team is refurbishing IT equipment professionally and traceable. “It is an important difference between refurbished and refurbished: the reconditioned products go through a complete process: testing, replacing parts, cleaning, final verification and guarantee, not just the hope that they will work. Our equipment reach schools or people who do not allow them otherwise, and behind each person, and to the field. Real: not to throw, to repair, to restore carefully to people and the planet ”, he says.
Manufacture of a single smartphone can generate between 45 and 120 kg of CO₂
Maybe not all the reconditioned equipment are at the level of a new one, adds Florin Niculae, maybe the camera is not as performance or the sound is not impeccable. “But the question is: do we need perfection in every object we use, or do we need a system that works for everyone? If we want new phones every year, they need to be produced. And that means the extraction of rare metals, consumption of resources, energy and emissions. For example, the manufacture of a single smartphone can generate between 45 and 120 kilograms of COA₂, Most of the COA₂ It involves environmental degradation and huge water consumption. he explains.
Our choices matter even if the neighbor does not do the same, Florin Niculae draws attention. “Because from a phone, a tablet, a laptop, tons of waste are formed. And when they get in a village in Thailand, we can no longer say that the problem does not concern us. We have legislation in Romania, we have collection centers, we have obligations for the producers, but nothing works if people do not participate. An act of responsibility that has a direct, real and global impact ””he signals.
The Romanian refrigerators do not leave for Thailand
By 2018, China was the main global destination for electronic waste. According to the United Nations, tens of thousands of tons of equipment out of use (from refrigerators and TVs, to laptops and mobile phones) They were exported annually from the Western countries to cheap, but extremely polluting recycling facilities.
With the prohibition of E-Waste imports by Beijing, the flow has reoriented. In just a few years, Thailand has become one of the regional processing centers, legal or not. According to the Earth Thailand NGO, the amount of E-Waste imported in the country has increased from 3,000 tons in 2013 to over 60,000 tons at present. Many of these transports come from the US and the European Union.
On the other hand, Dragoș Călugăru, the general manager of the Ecotic Association, believes that phones and laptops in Romania are unlikely to reach Thailand. The less the refrigerators. “In the refrigerator it is simple. It is a large volume product, it is simply unavoidable to be placed on a ship to Thailand. Most are treated in Romania and we have operators with Cenec EN50625 certified installations. It is also an important part that is treated non -compliant on the car sketches or which are lost in the old iron flow and the flow ends in the Turkish. used to leave Romania and it is more likely to see refrigerators of the Germans through the village fairs for sale ”, he claims.
In fact, at laptops, the Ecotic General Manager says that it is unlikely, as once they reached WEEE treatment operators, they are dismantled to separate the motherboards, memoirs, processors and hard dishes, elements that have flows to refineries in Europe but can also reach Asia refiners. “It is true that the flows to Asia can be uncertain, that we certainly do not know what the final destination is but, as the standards Cenelec 50625 will be mandatory, (in Romania they are already, and all operators must be certified until June 2026), much clearer data will be requested on these flows,” he said.
What happens to the phones in buy-back campaigns
As for phones, he thinks it can be a more complicated story. “What reaches the collection streams, if not dismantled in Romania, usually goes on the same flows as electronic plates but can also reach operators who check them for functionality and who extract useful parts. The problem we notice more to what does not reach the collection flows through the buy-back campaigns of the big telecom networks. And try to reuse in Europe but also in Africa and Asia. confesses Dragoș Călugăru.
He completes with the fact that illegal networks were discovered that sent waste to Africa and Asia, especially from Western Europe. “These taking advantage of the low transport cost (many containers return empty in Asia) but also that the shipment is cheaper than the correct treatment of WEEEs. But I think this flow, if there is still, is limited to Western Europe.”concludes the specialist.
According to UN data, humanity generates over 60 million tonnes of electronic waste annually, double compared to 15 years ago. Less than 25% of them are responsibly recycled. The rest arrive either in trash or illegal recycling circuits.
Countries such as Germany, France or the United States have introduced regulations that oblige the producers (Apple, Dell, Samsung, etc.) to recover the equipment at the end of the life cycle. But the efficiency of these programs varies, and in many cases, logistics and costs push companies towards non -transparent outsourcing.
So, what we throw, others breathe. Each device forgotten in a drawer becomes a piece in an equation with human, economic and ecological impact. And no system is sustainable if we do not assume it personally.
