60-Minutes Reports On "America's" eWaste Problem, Provides No Solutions or Options

By Mark Kolich on November 10, 2008 10:02 PM | No TrackBacks
I'm not a big fan of 60-minutes, given their liberally slanted track record and a consistent inability to report both sides of a story.  However, I found their recent piece on global eWaste somewhat fascinating.  Continue reading to watch the video and, of course, read my feedback.
Here's the segment from CBS (beware it has commercials for products and services I do not endorse in any way whatsoever):




Here are several problems I have with this piece:

  • The segment picks on Executive Recycling, a Colorado firm that specializes in recycling eWaste.  I'm not sure why 60-minutes chose to pick on Executive Recycling; it seemed unnecessary.  However, based on how 60-minutes described it, I'm sure there are hundreds of other "recycling firms" illegally exporting tons of eWaste overseas, none of which were mentioned.  If you're going to go through all of the trouble to track a shipping container full of CRT's from Colorado to Hong Kong, then why not do a broader investigation and find several other firms also guilty of the same "crime"?  Not surprisingly, Executive Recycling posted an official Press Release in response to this 60-minutes segment on their web-site.

  • The segment only discusses America's eWaste problem, and makes it seem that we are responsible for all of the eWaste environmental issues in China.  Fact is, there are many other industralized nations also exporting eWaste to Asia and other parts of the third-world.  Scott Pelley conveniently neglects to mention that eWaste also comes from many other modern countries.  What about the rest of the modern world?  What do they do with their eWaste?  Eat it?  It would have been nice to know roughly what percentage of those "acre's of monitors" were from America versus other parts of the world.

  • In general, the segment fails to place any responsibility with China.  First, it fails to recognize that the Chinese government has the power, and the means, to pull many of its citizens out of poverty.  If the Chinese people who are "cooking circuit boards over an open flame" have another means by which to earn a decent wage, perhaps they wouldn't resort to such environmentally threatening ventures.  Instead of helping its citizens, China spends billions on its military and other industrialized projects that only impact a relatively small segment of its population.  Secondly, if China actually cared about the environment as much as we do, they could easily put a stop to such risky behavior.  Instead, the Chinese turn a blind eye to the entire problem.  While, here in America, we whine and complain about environmental problems abroad.

  • Finally, Scott Pelley neglected to help viewers find a suitable alternative to recycling eWaste.  If so many recycling firms are sending dangerous eWaste overseas, how about doing a little research for us to find a few that don't?  Or, at least, give us some hints or suggestions on how to verify that a specific eWaste recycling firm is following the rules.  If only 60-minutes cut out the sensation around eWaste and helped us focus on solutions we might have something more useful to watch.

I would encourage you to read my post on one of the most comprehensive and well-done speeches I've ever read on environmentalism from Michael Crichton.

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About Mark

A Silicon Valley native, Mark Kolich is a full-time Software Engineer and a consultant for hire. A web technologies expert, his current focus is on building powerful and robust cloud-driven web-applications using Java, PHP, Perl, AJAX, DHTML, CSS, and JavaScript. His favorite programming languages are PHP, Java and JavaScript. He uses Linux, enjoys biking to work, loves building great software, and always writes elegant, readable, and maintainable code.

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