E-waste is often shipped to developing countries with rapidly growing economies. It is estimated that 50 to 80% of E-Waste ends up getting exported from developed nations to developing nations (Greenpeace, 2009). Vietnam and the Philippines are the two main countries within Southeast Asia which have the biggest informal recycling markets.
(Pravettoni, 2015)
The picture above illustrates how a developed nation – Japan – exports their E-Waste to various developing nations for disposal or processing. This is similar to Singapore’s modus operandi in E-Waste management.
When shipments of E-waste are received in the developing countries, they are often transported to backyards for processing such as stripping, dismantling, or burning. In that process, the urban mine contained in E-Waste is obtained in the form of valuable metals and other reusable materials.
However these forms of informal recycling poses various challenges. Due to poor regulations and enforcement, there are many unlicensed and often illegal E-Waste management practices. As such, the backyard management process is often conducted in the most inexpensive but dangerous ways (Honda, Khetriwal & Kuehr, 2016).
Valuable metals such as gold and copper can be extracted from electronics. However, this process enables many different types of toxic chemicals and metals to percolate into groundwater and be taken up by crops. As these chemicals are non-biodegradable, they persist in the environment, or even our food, for a long time. (Kiddee, Naidu, & Wong, 2013). This increases our exposure risk to heavy metals and chemicals (Robinson, 2009).
According to Wath, Dutt, and Chakrabarti’s (2011) findings, they reported that:
Circuit boards are subjected to open burning and acid baths to remove metals. Air emissions include toxic lead fumes. Discharge which is released into soils and rivers contains lead, cadmium, mercury and brominated dioxin.
Circuit board chips are given acid baths to derive gold. These acid baths involve chemical stripping using nitric and hydrochloric acid. Heavy metals and flame retardants are released into rivers. This increases acidity and pollutes the water, killing fishes and flora. Fumes of brominated dioxins, heavy metals, and Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons are also released.
Plastics are burnt in open piles in the backyards, or incinerated. This releases toxic fumes containing carbon monoxide, dioxins and furans. They also contain heavy metals and flame retardants.
Cables are burnt in order to obtain the copper compounds within them. This releases Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons into air, water, and soil.
Batteries can also short circuit when they are within the huge trash piles. This is very dangerous at spontaneous combustion can occur, starting unwanted fires.
As these processes occur in unregulated conditions, the toxins are released into the environment without any forms of better filtration or removal. Furthermore, these backyard processes can be rather ineffectual and unproductive as the full value of the recyclable materials are unable to be extracted.