SiliconBeat

My Sunday column (”We need to stop sending our e-waste overseas“) called on the U.S. to take two direct steps that would address the export of our e-waste to poor communities around the world.

The column came out of a conversation I had with Sheila Davis, the executive director of the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition.

I had several thoughtful e-mails from readers. But there was one in particular that I wanted to highlight. Ed Malley, of Aptos wrote:

“I agree with everything you say in your article. But you make no mention of the impact of removing the means by which “entire village economies are built”. Surely you or Ms. Davis are not proposing that we thank the poor villagers for doing a dangerous, thankless job, then leave them no alternative to replace the income generated by their handling of our e-waste.

Is Ms. Davis’s Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition offering any ideas?”

This was a point that Davis and I discussed, but I didn’t have room to squeeze it into the column.

First, it’s worth noting how Davis came to be involved in this issue in the first place. Years ago, she was a community organizer and had an idea for economic development. She wanted to create an informal system for low-income communities in the U.S. to collect and recycle e-waste as a way to create new income. But what she found was that the process was too complex and too dangerous.

That led Davis eventually to work at the coalition and now this issue. So I think she certainly understands the issue: You don’t want to punish those communities in trying to help them.

That’s a big part of the reason SVTC partnered with Chintan on this issue. Chintan is an evironmental and social justice organization based in India that focuses on the informal communities that have emerged around waste in that country. According to its mission statement:

“A special characteristic of the urban Indian dynamic is the work of hundreds of thousands of informal sector waste-recyclers : waste pickers, waste buyers and waste re-processors. They bear the brunt of a city’s consumption and offer it critical recycling services.”

If you read through Chintan’s site, they have a number of initiatives seeking to make the work of these informal networks safer, cleaner, and healthier. On its own, India is becoming increasingly urbanized, and as such, is generating plenty of its own waste, including hazardous waste, to provide work for these informal networks.

As just one example of Chintan’s work, they’re trying to organize many of these informal networks to help them get involved in policy decisions being made that potentially affect their work.

In an ideal world, these informal waste networks would allow people to do their work while being safe and maintaining their dignity.

But to circle around to the original point of my column: One of the best ways we can help at the start is start handling our own e-waste and stop adding to their burden.