Blog Post 6: Society 2
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What is the goal of this case study?
This study aims to highlight and investigate the effects of the life cycle of electronics hardware on the environment. They focus on the effects through the lenses of environmental and climate justice. The different sections highlight the different aspects of the damage and problems that come with this life cycle.
Discussion:
I decided to focus on the Mining, Deforestation, and Forest Fires section, and the Growing E-Waste Crisis section.
In the Mining, Deforestation, and Forest Fires section, I answered the following questions:
- Discuss the tensions between mining for economic development and climate justice. Can they coexist? Why or why not?
- In these mining scenarios, the clear path to economic growth is to spend less caring about the environment. This is similar to logging situations, but in logging, you rely on the very things you are taking away, so logging companies have a much higher incentive to mind the environment, and replant the trees. Logging companies also do so much less damage to the environment, and already many countries have policies on that. This is all to say that while the clearest path to economic growth by the mining companies is through a mindless disregard of the environment, I don’t think it is the only one. If consumers start preferring the companies that utilize climate and environmentally friendly mining companies for their resources, we can change what is incentivizing these companies. We can look to Apple, who is starting to make some steps down this road. They have chosen to source all of their materials in a “Carbon Neutral” way, either by buying from clean sources or offsetting the environmental impact themselves by reinvesting in the environment. If more companies continue this, we can get the mining industry to start favoring climate friendly processes to further their economic growth, thus allowing climate justice and economic development to coexist.
- Mining is often touted as indispensable due to the need for minerals in “green” technology. Do you think the potential benefit to climate mitigation outweighs the costs to local communities and environments? Why or why not?
- This question is quite hard to answer. On one hand, we have the climate impacts these green technologies give us, which is hard to argue with. On the other, we have the environmental impacts these mining enterprises make. I think the focus of these mining endeavors should be spend on minerals for not just green technologies, but for technologies that can reduce the impact of the effects of the mining. Obviously we cannot simply stop all other development - but a much larger portion of the outcomes of mining needs to be spent to mitigate the impact the mining has on the environment and local communities. I think the benefit to the climate needs to be expanded to include these local communities - simply the benefit to the climate is not enough to outweigh the cost to locals. Only when we rope in a benefit to the local communities as well does that benefit start to mitigate the effects of mining.
My final three questions came from the Growing E-Waste Crisis section, and were:
- How do the climate justice implications of e-waste relate to other social justice issues in the Global South (e.g., economic injustice, dangerous low-wage jobs, exploitation of lax environmental regulations, legacies of colonialism)? Describe connections between the climate justice issues of e-waste, manufacturing, and mining.
- All of the development and outsourcing of employment to these underprivileged communities in the Global South is done for one reason - the cost. The main reasons the cost of mining, manufacturing, recycling and disposing of e-waste, and every other outsourced endeavor is lower in these communities is the lack of policies and rules that attempt to mitigate the social and environmental impacts these operations have. This additional regulation adds overhead, and will increase the cost per unit of all of these operations. The climate justice implications are just the same - by going somewhere without the regulations, they can ignore them. The struggle with these policies is that even the workers can object to policies made to increase their safety - think of OSHA here in the US. Every time OSHA releases a new regulation protecting the workers, many complain that it reduces their productivity, and they don’t want to follow it. It is these same workers that end up having many health problems later in their life, due to things that could have been prevented if they had followed the OSHA codes. The climate impacts are even harder to get people on board - you can’t see the results of these policies for years, and it takes analysis of climate trends and weather to see the impacts even then. Since they cannot see the impacts, so many people across the world don’t see it as a real issue, and immediately go toward maintaining the other justices, like social and environmental, without a care towards the climate.
- What are your thoughts on the role of the CE in addressing issues in the electronics hardware life cycle? Could recycling e-waste help reduce natural resource extraction for electronics hardware manufacturing, or is this an overly ambitious assumption? Why or why not?
- I think the CE is the vital component of making electronics sustainable at all. If we can reduce the amount of mining and waste management involved in the process, it will always be better that adding policies to mitigate the harm. Since we simply want the raw metals, that we can mostly extract from the recycled electronics, the only thing standing in the way of this being the largest source of these metals is the lack of infrastructure. Most metals involved in the creation of electronics are not chemically changed during the life of the electronics, making it possible to reuse them. Even if we only reuse the components of the electronics, people like me can always find uses for old technology. I am currently performing a musical piece that uses old technology as instruments, and throughout my house I have a myriad of random old devices performing functions, and reused to do other things. By combining these recycling techniques, we can easily replace most of the waste of these devices, and can achieve significantly less adverse effects on the local communities ad the environments around them.
- What might pose challenges to the proposed solutions to the issues surrounding e-waste? Why might certain stakeholders oppose any of the solutions?
- All of the regulations and combination solutions have a common problem - they cost more to implement. In a society that already relies on these horrible jobs to get by, if they have to go slower or work less, or travel farther for work, they will be less productive, and most likely make less money. Every solution cost money, but I think the only way these costs can be mitigated would be to have the costs fall to the companies in the north. The stakeholders that are the workers will not be happy with any solution that reduces their paycheck, and since they are already underpaid, we need to find the money to fund this elsewhere. The CEOs and high ups at the companies sending the waste to these sites also will not be happy with solutions that reduce their salary, but they are already making so much that they will still be able to survive and live healthy lives. Therefore, it makes significantly more sense to prioritize maintaining the salary of the underpaid and endangered workers than the stakeholders(I’m so funny) of these large companies.
My Question:
What actions can an ordinary person take to draw awareness to the climate, environmental, and social problems associated with mining and the hardware life cycle? What actions will you take?
Why?
I chose this question because It is what I immediately went to after reading this - what can I do to help? I aim to be as mindful as possible when purchasing devices, and try to purchase as many used devices as possible, to keep reusing electronics instead of adding to the problem.
Reflection:
This case study and article tie to something very close to me - reusing technology. I love recycling and reusing different parts of computers and phones to make something that better suits me without having to get a new device. I have also previously done some research into the horrible conditions that exist at e-waste disposal sites, and so I am glad we are learning more about them, and shedding more light on what is going on.